How-to: Reading a CoverGuard Record

The Record is the heart of CoverGuard. It "leads with the answer" — you learn the risk, cost, carriers, and value impact before you scroll.

Who this is for: everyone; the panels you see adapt to your role. Where: open any property from Search, Shop by budget, saved properties, or a Record link. Standalone page: /properties/:id. The in-app modal shows the same content in the same order.

The decision at the top (private preview)

Rolling out now — you may not see this yet.

Above everything else, the Record can lead with the decision itself, in one sentence you could repeat to a client: whether this property is straightforward to insure, insurable once you clear specific conditions, insurable only through the residual market, or declined outright.

Underneath that sentence you get, in this order and without opening anything:

• Why — the single biggest thing driving that answer. If finding a willing carrier is the hard part, it says so; if the cost of cover is, it says that instead. When the two are genuinely close it tells you they are, rather than picking one and sending you to fix the wrong thing.
• What it costs — the modeled annual premium, or plainly that we have not estimated it yet.
• Who will write it — how many of the carriers we checked are writing cover like this.
• How sure we are — stated right there, not in a footnote. If the carrier read is modeled rather than confirmed, or too little hazard data resolved to stand behind a verdict, the lead says so before you act on it.
• What to do next — one action, not a menu.

Five separate things, never blurred into one. Right under the decision you get the CoverGuard Score, its band, the decision itself, our confidence in the evidence, and the condition of the data — each in its own labelled field. The last two are genuinely different questions, and keeping them apart is the point: we can be highly confident on incomplete data (if every carrier declined, we do not need the hazard picture to know the answer), and we can be unsure on data that is complete and current. The data condition says whether everything we expected actually arrived, whether it is current, and whether any two sources disagree — and it never stands in for the band. A property we have not finished assessing does not get "Limited data" where its band should be; the band says it is withheld, and says why.

The next step is chosen from what we found, not offered as a menu. A property where clearing a condition would widen the set of willing carriers sends you to the conditions. One where the carriers are there and the premium is the problem sends you to what is driving the premium. A declined property sends you to a broker about residual-market options — never to a quote request, because there is nothing for one to reach. And the step you are shown is one you can actually take: if your plan does not include it we say so and show the upgrade path rather than letting you click into a refusal, and if you have already sent a quote request on this property we point you at that one instead of offering to duplicate it.

We never promise a price or a binding. A quote request goes to CoverGuard's own brokerage team — no carrier has seen it, nothing is priced, and nothing is bound. See Requesting a quote.

When we cannot give you a decision, you get an honest one instead. A declined property says every carrier we checked refused it — a confirmed answer, not missing information. A property we could not assess says exactly that, and deliberately shows no score: an unassessed property can read as a good number, and publishing it would be the most misleading thing we could do.

Reading the summary for your role

Every Record leads with your CoverGuard Score. Buyers and sellers see the Score card first, then the summary right beneath it — What this means for you for a buyer, What a buyer will find for a seller — and that summary opens on the score too.

As a buyer, the summary names hazard exposure in plain language and leads with an estimated annual insurance range when one is available. You can open the risk and cost detail for the supporting figures, including the 0–100 hazard score. In the What this home could mean for you block, beneath the cost figure, See risk-adjusted value shows what the home could be worth once its hazard exposure and insurance cost are priced in — a modeled estimate, not an appraisal, which is why it waits for you to ask for it. Select the figure to see what moves it up or down. Use it to sense-check your offer, never in place of an appraisal or a lender's valuation. As a seller, it focuses on questions a buyer may raise and lets you inspect the modeled effect on value or estimate your proceeds. Agents, mortgage professionals and insurance brokers retain the detailed figures and supporting sections for client, collateral and coverage work.

Choosing which Record you read

You pick the Record written for you. The first time you open a Record, you may see "Which best describes you?" above it — choose Home buyer, Home seller, Real estate agent, Insurance broker or agent, or Lender, and the page switches straight away. Buyers and sellers get the four-section Record below; agents, brokers and lenders get the full professional one. If you signed up recently you won't be asked: the role you chose when you registered already answered it. Choose Not now and we won't ask again.

Change it any time at Account → Settings → Which best describes you? — pick one and choose Save. It only changes which Record you read — never your plan, your price or what your account can do.

Bought a Record, or on a plan? As a buyer or seller you can still see the full professional Record for any home you hold in full: choose See the full Record at the top of the page. Your own summary stays on top, and Back to your summary returns you. After a $49 purchase, the note on your Records list takes you straight there.

Your choice is read from your account, so the Record may take a moment to settle into it on a slow connection. It shows the fuller professional layout until then — nothing is ever hidden from you while we work out who you are. If you aren't signed in, you'll see the buyer's Record.

When a 1–10 score is published, it stays visible, and buyers and sellers can choose See score evidence and methodology for the supporting detail behind it — how the property compares with its region, and what the carrier-availability ceiling did to the number. When you print or save the Record, that detail is included whether or not you opened it. If no score is published there is no such button: the reason is simply on the card.

Two things are never behind that button either, because they are not evidence for the score — they are what the score means: the date it was calculated, and the reminder that every insurance figure here is a modeled estimate rather than a quote. So if every carrier we checked declined the property, you are told that on the card itself. You never have to go looking for the bad news.

The answer-first block (top of the Record)

The Record opens with your CoverGuard Score — a single number out of 10, its band, and the carrier-availability read behind it — as its own headline before anything else. That's the one thing to read if you read nothing else. Higher is better: a 9 is straightforward to insure, a 2 is not.

The band follows the number, always the same way: 9–10 Straightforward, 7–8 Manageable, 6 Workable, 3–5 Difficult, 1–2 Severe. So two properties that both score 5 always share a band, and the Record, the PDF, the badge and the Advisor all name it the same.

What carriers will do sets a ceiling on the score. A strong hazard reading cannot outrun the market. When only a state plan or last-resort insurer will write the home, the score stops at 4. When carriers will write it only on conditions, it stops at 5 — or at 7 when every condition is paperwork, such as an elevation certificate. A home every carrier we checked has declined shows no score anywhere on the Record, including the Insurability section, because that refusal is the finding. And when too few carriers answered for us to tell what the market will do, you still get the score, marked "Carrier availability not yet confirmed" — read it as the hazard picture alone until a carrier confirms.

The score is the Record's answer. The coverage gate and placement difficulty further down each answer one narrower question — will carriers write this property, and how hard is it to place — so they can read differently from the headline. When they do, the score is the one to go by; the other two tell you why.

Sometimes there is no score, and that is the honest answer. Your CoverGuard Score reads the property's hazard exposure — flood, fire, wind, earthquake, crime — and how many carriers are actually writing it, since a home few carriers will touch is harder to insure whatever its hazard reading says. The two together become one insurability figure. Separately, the Record shows you two things that decide whether a property can actually be placed and at what price: how hard it is to place with a carrier, and how expensive it is once placed. Those feed the 0-100 composition figure further down, not the headline. If too little of the hazard picture resolves, or carriers have refused the property outright, we withhold the score rather than publish one we can't stand behind.

Cost is a common gap, and it affects the composition figure rather than your score. Pricing a property needs a county premium comparable for its coverage, or at minimum the dwelling coverage the premium is quoted against. Without enough of that, the Cost burden section reads Not computed and says in plain words what's missing, and the composition figure further down is estimated from hazard data alone, which the Record says in words where that figure appears. Your CoverGuard Score at the top is unaffected — it does not use cost. A missing input never counts against a property either way: a low score means we measured something bad, not that we couldn't measure anything.

How this compares

A figure on its own has no anchor — 62 could be ordinary for your street or the worst house on it. So wherever a score is published, the hero also shows how this property compares to its neighborhood and its region: the typical composite figure for other properties in the same ZIP, and again for the wider county (or state), with a marker showing where this property sits. Where no score is published the comparison goes too, on screen and in the document alike — a comparison sits underneath a score, and there is nothing for it to be a comparison of.

This comparison runs on its own 0-100 scale, and it is not your CoverGuard Score. Your CoverGuard Score is the 1-10 figure at the top of the Record — the one on your PDF and on the badge, read from the property's hazard exposure and carrier availability. The comparison figure is a different measurement: how the property's placement difficulty and cost burden compose, out of 100.

They are not the same number at two precisions, and it is worth being blunt about that, because the reassuring version would be easier to write and wrong. A property can read 8 out of 10 and sit at 45 out of 100 in the comparison — they are answering different questions, and neither is a rounding of the other. What they do share is direction: higher is easier on both, so a property above its neighbourhood typical here really is composing better than its neighbours. Just never read "62" as a CoverGuard Score of 62 — the section labels itself "composition, out of 100" for exactly this reason.

Each row reads in plain terms — "14 points easier to insure than typical for ZIP 89130 — this property scores higher than 78% of the 9 nearby properties CoverGuard has assessed."

There are two kinds of row, and each says which it is:

• Measured — labelled median, and that word is doing real work. It is the middle score among the homes CoverGuard has assessed in that area, not their average: on the small groups this feature works with, one unusual property — a single home in a flood zone on an otherwise ordinary street — can drag an average several points and you'd never see that it had. The middle score doesn't move like that, so it's a fairer answer to "what does a typical home near me score?". It shows the sample size right next to the percentage, because that's what tells you how much weight to put on it. It is not a census of the area, only of what we've scored there.
• Modeled — marked "Modeled", with a dashed bar. This is what you see when there aren't yet enough assessed homes near you to compare against. Rather than leave you with no anchor at all, we show the score CoverGuard expects for your area: our national average, adjusted for how your state (and county, where we have it) is calibrated for flood, fire, wind, earthquake and crime. There's no percentile on a modeled row — there's no set of neighbors to rank you against.

It's in the PDF too. When you download or send the report, "How this compares" comes with it — the same rows, the same sample sizes, and the same distinction between a measured median and a modeled expectation, written out rather than shown as a dashed bar. If you'd rather not include it, switch CoverGuard Score off before you generate the document — the comparison travels with the score it anchors, so there is no separate switch for it.

Every hazard figure in the PDF says where it came from. Under each hazard in the PDF's risk breakdown, one line reads the same as the tag on the page — for example "Sourced · FEMA NFHL · as of 2026-09-15" or "Modeled · baseline estimate, no local data". Anything we could not confirm for your property is marked Modeled, never Sourced.

If the section simply isn't there, it means one of two things, and neither is "the property is average". Either we had nothing solid enough to compare against, or no score was published in the first place: a comparison sits underneath a score, so where there is no score there is nothing for it to be a comparison of.

Which properties lose the score — and so the comparison — differs slightly between the screen and the document today. On the Record it goes when every carrier checked declined the property, when it was assessed from too few perils, or when there's no assessment yet. The downloaded PDF withholds on the last two as well, and additionally on a hazard reading extreme enough that the property isn't insurable in the standard market — a hazard judgment, not a carrier one, so a property can have carriers actively writing and still land there. The two lists are being brought together; until they are, the document is the more conservative of the two on hazard and the Record is the more conservative on carriers.

The comparison sharpens on its own. Your neighborhood row starts at whatever level we actually have neighbors for — your exact ZIP if we've scored enough homes there, otherwise the wider ZIP area around you — and tightens as more homes near you get assessed. Nothing you need to do.

A measured median is only shown once there are enough assessed neighbors that no single one could be worked out from it. Below that the row is left out entirely rather than shown with a caveat.

Both sides of every comparison are always the same kind of number — a property showing an estimated score is compared against estimates, never against confirmed scores — so the gap you see is a real difference between properties, not an artifact of how each was measured.

Right below it come the tiles — two when the score above already answered "how risky is this," or three when it hasn't:

1. ~~Overall risk~~ — folded into the score hero above; this tile only reappears on its own if a score genuinely couldn't be computed for the property.
2. Cost to insure — the modeled annual premium for the coverage you'd actually have to carry, with its confidence. Optional coverage is quoted separately (below).
3. Risk-adjusted value — the risk-adjusted value with its grade and how far it sits above or below market.

Everything past the hero starts collapsed, and every collapsed section shows its own one-line answer — so you can read the whole Record as a summary and only open what you actually need. "Carriers" tells you 8 carriers modeled before you touch it; "Coverage gate" says Easily insurable · 9 of 12 carriers responded; "Cost burden" says 41 / 100 · Above market. Every section works this way — cost by peril, carriers, the coverage gate, required coverage, placement difficulty, cost burden, the risk profile, insurability, the insurance estimate, mitigation, property details, quotes, decision history, the map, checklists and notes.

A section still opens itself automatically when you jump to it from a tile, a part chip or a shared link. One section opens on its own: the insurance cost estimate, whenever there's no cost answer to show at all (you're not signed in, or a monthly allowance is spent) — the explanation of why shouldn't itself be behind a tap. On your free Record the section carries a real answer — the cost range — so it collapses like any other. Once open:

• Cost to insure by peril — the premium broken down by peril (flood / wind / fire / earthquake) as bars, in two groups with their own totals:
• Required — the cover this property has to carry. The bars always add up to the figure beside them, labelled Required to insure, and their percentage shares always add to 100% — every line that figure is made of is listed here, and nothing listed here is left out of it. It's the same required figure the rest of the Record states. A peril earns its own line once its hazard is moderate or higher — so, for example, a moderate-wildfire California home shows a fire line, not just earthquake; lower-hazard perils stay folded into the base homeowners policy. If a line is required but has no modeled premium yet, it reads Not priced, and the required figure is understated by that line. Crime has no coverage line, so it appears as a footnote.
• Recommended — coverage you can genuinely decline, with its own +$X / yr if added. None of it is inside the required figure, and the two are never added together: the required figure is what you have to carry, and these show what each extra policy would cost on top of it. Earthquake is always here (it's never part of a homeowners policy), and so is flood when the property is outside a special flood hazard area. Each line carries a badge for how strongly it's indicated by THIS property's hazard: Recommended (moderate), Nice to have (low), or even Required when its own hazard is high — which means "strongly indicated for this property", not "you have to buy it". Hover the badge and it says so. Earthquake is never marked Required, however severe the seismic hazard: no lender and no law has ever required it.
• Which carriers are binding — the top carriers, binding-first / cheapest-first, with indicative premiums, a Bind-Path signal and market condition in the header, and a "Show all" to expand. Click a carrier to drill into its coverage parts (A–F + peril lines), bundle offers, and headline binding terms.
• Coverage gate — a single read on carrier availability for this property: Easily insurable (an admitted carrier is actively writing), Insurable with conditions (an admitted carrier will write it, subject to named conditions — see below), Very hard to insure (no ordinary carrier, but a state plan or surplus-lines option exists), Potentially uninsurable (every carrier checked explicitly declined — a real finding, not a guess), or Not yet assessed (not enough carrier data to say anything yet — shown honestly rather than a fabricated answer). It states how many carriers responded out of how many were checked, as of when, plus a confidence read.

Two of those verdicts are softened when the evidence doesn't support the stronger wording, so you may also see Likely insurable or Insurable with effort. A carrier IS writing this property in both cases — what's changed is how much weight to put on it. You'll see Likely insurable when the carrier data behind the read is thin or hasn't been refreshed recently, and Insurable with effort when it's solid but the market is genuinely hard: only a small share of the ordinary carriers will write this address, or the property's hazard reading is severe. The point is that "Easily insurable" now means easy — it is never shown over a hard market or a low-confidence read.

Three different carrier counts appear on a Record and they measure different things. Hover any of them for the same explanation. Responded is how many carriers returned a real appetite signal, out of those checked. Actively writing is how many are currently writing this kind of property here. Matching appetite (under Placement difficulty) is how many have underwriting rules that fit this property. Insurable with conditions also lists the specific conditions — a document to file or physical work to do — each with an estimated cost range and how long it typically takes, longest first. This is a genuinely new, additive signal (CoverGuard Score v3, Phase 1) — it doesn't replace or soften the insurability verdict above it.

The tiles are interactive, and so is the score hero. Select Cost to insure to jump straight to (and auto-open) its detail section further down the Record. Select Risk-adjusted value to open a details window with the navy valuation hero — market and assessed value alongside the risk-adjusted figure — and a waterfall of the adjustments behind it: physical hazard, bindability (an uncapped liquidity discount when a property is effectively unplaceable), capitalized excess premium, and a small quality-premium upside, with a holistic confidence read.

If you're buying or selling a home, your Record has four sections. The full technical breakdown — cost by peril, the carrier list, required cover, placement difficulty, cost burden, the FAIR Plan model and the insurability detail — is built for brokers, lenders and agents placing the business, and it asks you to work the answer out for yourself. Yours states it instead:

1. Summary — whether this home is straightforward to insure, what your CoverGuard Score means in words, the single biggest concern, and when it was all assessed. Selling? The second line tells you what a buyer will raise, and beneath it sits your score beside a buyer's modeled monthly cost to insure the home and how many points your fixes could add.
2. Cost & coverage — what cover costs a year and a month, the likely range either side of it, and how confident we are. Buying, you also get a prompt to turn it into a real quote for the address; selling, the risk-adjusted value leads, because that is the number that sets your asking price.
3. Next steps — one thing to do now, and what follows it. Selling? Your next steps open with the three fixes that would most improve how insurable your home looks to a buyer, each with how many points it could add to your score and what it's likely to cost, then Share with buyers. See Home seller.
4. Property details — collapsed until you open it: every hazard with its score, where each figure came from and when, what the cost assumes, whether insurers are writing in your area, the map, and the coverage history.

Two numbers, two scales — don't read them as one. Your CoverGuard Score is out of 10, and higher is better. Each hazard is scored out of 100, and higher is worse. A 4 out of 10 and a 59 out of 100 are not the same kind of number, so the Record always says which scale it is using.

Your saved checklists and notes are still there, below the four sections.

In the in-app Record pop-out, a sticky Contents rail (desktop) lets you jump between sections. The full Record page has no Contents rail: its parts read top to bottom under their own questions, and on a phone a row of chips at the top jumps between them.

What's free vs. what needs a plan: the property details — address, beds and baths, square footage, year built, assessed and market value, and the public parcel record — are free on any property, no account required. So is the hazard band a search card shows: you can always see whether a property reads as Clear, Watch, Constrained, Hard to Place or Unplaceable before deciding it's worth a closer look.

A free account gets one Record. Open a property's Record while signed in on the free plan and it's yours, for good: the CoverGuard Score for that property, the full risk profile — every hazard scored, with the sources behind each one — and your cost to insure as a range, a realistic spread for the required cover with its confidence stated.

The deeper analysis is what a plan adds, and you can see exactly what it is rather than guessing: Cost by peril, Carriers, Coverage gate, Required coverage, Placement difficulty, Cost burden, FAIR Plan, Insurability and Lower premium all stay on the page, each with a lock and one line saying what is inside. Open one and it tells you what you would get.

It's one property, for good. The first Record you open is the one you keep — come back to it as often as you like, and it stays readable forever. Every other property shows the band and the property details until you upgrade.

A paid plan (Individual and up) opens all of it, turns the range into the full cost estimate, and lifts the one-property limit. Upgrade from any locked section or from Pricing — or buy a single property's Record outright if you only need the one.

How the Record is organized (agents, brokers and lenders)

If you work the placement — an agent, broker or lender — the Record is grouped into parts that each answer one question, in the order you'd ask them:

1. The CoverGuard Score — the answer itself, and the biggest thing on the page, right under the property's address. The score out of 10 and its band, the coverage-gate result, how confident we are in the evidence and when it was assessed; one sentence saying why; three glance cells — Can it be insured? (the coverage-gate result, and how many of the carriers we checked responded), What will it cost? (the modeled annual cost of the required cover) and the risk-adjusted value — each of which takes you to its detail (these are the defaults — agents, brokers and lenders each get three picked for their role, below); and one next step. The benchmark and the gate cap behind the score sit under See score evidence and methodology, and Why this score — the insurability assessment — is closed right beneath it.
2. Can it be insured? — the carriers, the coverage gate, how hard it is to place, and — only when no standard carrier is writing — the California FAIR Plan. The one-line answer under the question is the coverage gate's own verdict, and every carrier number on the Record — the Score's glance cell, the one-sentence reason, this answer — is the same one: how many of the carriers we checked responded.
3. What will it cost? — required coverage, the insurance estimate, cost burden, and the cost broken down by peril. The answer under the question states what the required cover costs a year and, separately, what the recommended cover would add — never added together — and every cost figure on the Record agrees with it.
4. What do I do next? — one line naming the single best next step (the same one the Score recommends), then the top three ways to lower the premium, ranked, with Show all for the rest.
5. Evidence — the full risk profile, the map, the coverage history, the property's public record and your decision history, closed by default behind one header (it stays open for the moment it takes the page to work out who you are, then closes). Tap it to open. Any link to something inside — a part chip, a tile, a shared link — opens it for you, and your browser's find (Ctrl+F / ⌘F) and printing both reach inside it too.
6. Your workspace — on a wide screen, a panel to the right of the Record that stays in view as you scroll: Save, Monitor, Share, Compare, Download PDF (and the branded report or seller disclosure where your plan and role include them), then your quote requests, checklists, notes and the share link. On a narrower screen the actions sit under the address and the rest follows the Record. If you're a home seller, the checklists open with a Pre-listing checklist built from this home's risk, with a cost range and timeframe on each item — see the Home Seller guide.

The page header is one line: back to search, the property's full address, and (for a home buyer or seller who holds the full Record) the switch between the two Records. The market value, assessed value, parcel number and Record ID are in Property details & public records inside Evidence. The market value shows the date it was fetched ("as of …"). It is the most recent saved value and can be weeks old, so check the date before relying on it.

On a phone the Record is the first tab, in the same parts, with a row of chips at the top to jump between them; the risk profile and the property details are in Evidence, and Checklists and Notes are their own tabs.

What you see first depends on your role

The parts, the figures and the evidence are the same for every professional — what changes is the order, which sections start open, the three figures that lead under the score (the risk-adjusted value is always there too), and the one next step on a Record with nothing to fix. So each of you lands on the answer your job turns on, without digging:

A few things stay true whichever you are:

• Same question, same number. An agent and a lender asking what cover costs see the same figure — the role changes what leads, never the answer.
• Nothing is hidden. A section that starts closed for your role is one tap away, and if you open or close a section yourself, the Record remembers your choice.
• A finding always comes first. If the Record finds something to deal with — no carrier will write it, there are conditions to meet, the data is thin — the next step is about that, not the hand-off.
• Insurance escrow is insurance only. The lender's monthly figure is the required cover's cost a month, before property taxes — not a full escrow payment.

Your role comes from Which best describes you? (Account → Settings), so you can change it any time.

Home buyers and sellers see their own shorter Record (a summary, the cost, next steps and property details), which isn't grouped this way.

The deep sections (below the answer)

• Full risk profile — per-peril scores and narratives with state context, sourced from FEMA, USGS, Cal Fire, NOAA, the Census Bureau, the FBI, USDA, Esri, and more (every source is cited; crime is estimated from Census Bureau indicators unless FBI crime rates are available). Each peril's tile shows its score, the hazard's own icon, and its risk level with a small level icon beside the word, so the level reads the same in greyscale or print as it does in colour. A peril marked Not assessed has no level icon — there's no level to show.
• Where each reading came from — every peril says whether it was Sourced (measured for this property from the named source), or Modeled (CoverGuard's estimate, because no local data answered or we can't confirm the source did), and gives the date it's as of. Modeled readings say so in the peril's heading, so you can tell an estimate from a measurement without opening it. The same tags appear under "Where these figures came from" in the buyer and seller view.
• About this evidence — open it under any peril (or, in the downloaded PDF, read it printed under each peril) to see the same nine facts for every source: who it's from, when we read it, what area it covers (the exact map point, the parcel, or a whole region), whether it was observed, derived or modeled, how much weight it carries, how it affects your answer, what it can't tell you, and how long before we treat it as out of date. The heading says whether the evidence is Current, Incomplete, Out of date, Not available, or that the Sources disagree — and an out-of-date or disputed peril says so in its own heading, so you see it without opening anything. A disagreement is never quietly settled for you: if the flood map's zone and its Special Flood Hazard Area answer don't match, the peril says Sources disagree and so does the report's data condition at the top, because whether flood insurance is required depends on which one is right. Ask our brokerage team to confirm before you rely on it.
• Per-peril detail panels — flood (FEMA NFHL zone, BFE, SFHA), wildfire (FHSZ, WUI, burn probability, drought), wind/hurricane (design wind speed estimated from the ASCE 7-22 maps, surge, hurricane tracks), earthquake (spectral acceleration, landslide), crime. The crime figure is reported agency crime rates where those are available, and otherwise an estimate from the area's socioeconomic indicators (poverty, income, unemployment). The panel names its source, or says it is one or the other when a saved report cannot tell. Where measured terrain data is available, the flood panel can also note local relief — when a home sits lower than the ground immediately around it, water tends to pool there even outside a mapped flood zone, so the flood read is nudged up to reflect that. It's a modeled sharpening of the flood score, not a change to your FEMA flood zone.
• Insurance cost estimate — premiums by coverage type with confidence.
• Insurability assessment — difficulty level, potential issues, recommended actions, plus a confidence read and neighborhood context: when we've assessed enough nearby homes, the Record notes the typical insurability difficulty in that ZIP, and if carriers have recently pulled back in the area you'll see a "confirm current availability" heads-up. Neighborhood history only adds context and sets the confidence chip — it never changes the property's own verdict; only a recent, serious carrier exit in the ZIP can nudge the difficulty up.
• Mitigation — actions (roof, vents, defensible space) with modeled impact. Check the fixes you plan to make and watch the estimated insurability and premium update; once a fix is finished, press Mark done beside it. Then Save remediation plan to keep your planned and done fixes on this property (you'll need to be signed in). The estimated score can't rise above the ceiling carriers set for the home (4 when only a last-resort insurer will write it, 5 or 7 when carriers want conditions met first). Where the Record publishes no score, the card shows no estimated score either, but the fixes can still lower the premium.
• Property details & photos — street/aerial imagery, tax history, sale history, owner info, building details, neighborhood amenities, walkability.
• Map, checklists, and quotes. The map carries the same hazard-layer toggles as the search map. To zoom it, hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) while you scroll, or pinch with two fingers on a touchscreen — a plain scroll or one-finger swipe moves the Record, so the map never traps you mid-scroll.

Three levels, so you can go as deep as you need

Every section of the Record belongs to one of three bands — and the parts are arranged the same way, answer first and evidence last — so you can see at a glance how deep any part of it goes:

• The answer — what this property means for you, and the one thing to do next.
• Why — the findings the answer rests on: which carriers are writing, how hard it is to place, and what cover costs.
• The evidence — what is observed or modeled about the property, and where it came from: the peril grid, the map, the coverage history, the public record.

Each band is written to stand on its own. If you stop at the answer you have a complete, non-misleading result; if you stop at "Why" you are not missing a qualification that only appears in the evidence.

Sections you open stay open. Expand the carrier slate, follow a link, come back — it's still expanded, and so is everything else you opened. That holds across a page refresh and across the browser's Back button, and it follows you between the full Record and the report pop-out, so you're not re-opening the same panels each time. It lasts for the browser tab you're working in, not forever: close the tab and the next Record starts tidy again.

Which panels you see depends on your role — buyers get a visual, neighborhood-flavored set; agents/lenders/brokers get everything.

Freshness & refresh

Records are saved snapshots served straight from the database when fresh. On view, CoverGuard auto-refreshes if the snapshot is stale (past its AI-determined staleness horizon) or the valuation model has been superseded. A freshness bar shows when it was generated. To force a rebuild from fresh data, use the Refresh action.

"Up to date" is about the Record, and it now checks the data underneath it too. A Record can be rebuilt minutes ago from carrier data that hasn't moved in months — both true, and the badge used to report only the first. When the oldest evidence behind the Record is more than 30 days old, the badge reads Partly out of date instead, and says which part and how old ("the carrier data behind it is 64 days old"). Refreshing won't change it — a carrier's appetite is only as current as the carrier makes it — so this is there to tell you how much weight to put on the read, not to prompt an action. The blocks that rest on carrier data state their own "as of" date where they appear.

What's real vs. modeled

Every section states what it rests on, right in its header. Under each section's title and one-line answer there's a small grey chip — "11+ sources · modeled estimate · moderate confidence", "live carrier data", "modeled carrier appetite · low confidence". It's there whether the section is open or closed, so you never have to open a section to find out how strongly its figure is evidenced. Read it as three answers at most: how many public data sources are behind it (shown only where the figures are the hazard measurements — the risk profile and the insurability read), whether the carrier side is live or modeled, and how confident the platform is in its own number. A dollar figure carries no source count, because a premium is a model whose inputs include those measurements — not a reading taken from them. Where too little hazard data resolved for a property, the chip says just "limited hazard data" and drops the rest, so it never claims a source count or a confidence the section's own answer has already refused.

Nothing on a CoverGuard Record is marked "independently verified", and that's deliberate: we don't have a verified source behind these figures today, so a badge saying otherwise would be untrue. The per-section chip is what we show instead — the honest version of the same information, stated per section rather than claimed once for the whole page.

Look for the "Modeled estimate" banner. Carrier writing status, appetite, premiums, and per-carrier coverage detail are currently modeled from the carrier's durable facts and market conditions unless a real feed/admin-set value overrides them. That's honest labeling — treat the numbers as decision support, and confirm final terms with the carrier. If you want the full picture of where each figure comes from, the How This Is Modeled page sets out what CoverGuard measures from public hazard data, what it models and why the modeled parts are reproducible rather than invented, and what a modeled estimate is not — worth sending to a client or a lender who asks "where does this number come from?" rather than paraphrasing it yourself. Because the coverage gate reads the same carrier data, it carries the same "this gate is a modeled preview" note whenever the slate behind it isn't confirmed from a live carrier feed — which is almost always true today. Verify with a licensed agent or by requesting quotes before relying on it.

A peril marked "Not assessed" is not a low-risk finding. Each hazard is scored from a public data source, and occasionally a source has no determination for a location — FEMA may return no mapped flood zone, or no crime data may be published for the area. Those perils are labeled Not assessed and are left out of the overall score entirely, rather than being counted as a good result. If several perils read that way, treat the overall score as provisional and lean on the ones that did resolve. The downloaded PDF and the branded report say the same thing — an unmeasured peril prints as "Not assessed" there too, with the reason alongside it, so a document you forward can't be read as a clean bill of health. The Advisor is held to it as well: ask it about a peril that didn't resolve and it will tell you it wasn't assessed rather than describe it as low.

An unmeasured flood zone still shows up in the cost to insure. Until the flood zone is measured, CoverGuard treats the property as possibly being in a FEMA flood zone — so the insurance estimate includes a flood line, shown as a range from an outside-the-flood-zone policy to an inside-the-flood-zone one, and labeled as unmeasured. Confirm the flood zone (a FEMA flood map or an elevation certificate) to narrow it.

The document leads with the same CoverGuard Score you see on screen — same figure, same scale. A downloaded PDF and a branded report both open with your CoverGuard Score out of 10 and its band, matching the Record, the shareable record page and the score badge, so a client or a lender reading the document and looking up the property online sees one number, not two. (The one case where they can differ is whether a score appears at all, not what it says — see the note under How this compares above.) Where a property's hazard exposure is extreme enough that it isn't insurable in the standard market, or too little of that exposure could be measured, the document publishes no score at all rather than a number that would read as reassurance. The downloaded PDF also says which of the two it is, in the line under the missing figure; a branded report simply omits the score, since a client-facing document is not the place to explain the platform's internal reasons. Note that first case is read from hazard, not from carriers: a property can have carriers actively writing and still land there, so the document does not claim they refused.

An unbranded download carries the coverage history; anything client-facing does not. The timeline of claims, non-renewals, carrier changes and premium moves travels with a report you download for yourself when you have no company branding set up — it goes to you, and it shows you what you already see on the Record. It is left out of every document shaped to be handed on: a branded report (the one CoverGuard stores and gives you a shareable link for), a public Record link, and your own download once you have saved a company name, logo or colour — at that point it carries your branding and a "Prepared by" line, which is what makes it a client document. A timeline can include events other brokers contributed, and a file you hand over cannot be taken back. There is no switch for any of this, and the rest of the report is unaffected. See Reading a property's coverage history.

Worth knowing if you have older saved documents: these documents have changed twice. Older PDFs led with a risk score — a number that runs the other way, where higher means more risk — so a property you now see as a 3 out of 10 would have printed "72/100". Later ones led with a 0-100 figure that ran the right way but on a different scale from the badge and the Record. Documents you generate from now on lead with the CoverGuard Score out of 10, the same figure and scale as everywhere else; where a risk or composition figure still appears it is labeled as one, with its scale and direction spelled out.

If most of the Record reads "Not assessed", it will retry on its own. A Record is normally kept for a day before it is rebuilt, because flood maps and fire-zone designations move on a scale of months. But when a check comes back with too little measured — a public source was slow or briefly unavailable while your Record was being built — CoverGuard deliberately keeps that result for well under an hour instead of a day, so the next time you open the property it tries the sources again rather than showing you the same gap until tomorrow. You can always force it immediately with Refresh.

The premium is priced at a standard $1,000 deductible against a modeled rebuild cost (what it would cost to reconstruct the home), not against its market value — land isn't insured. A real quote at a higher deductible will come in below the estimate.

Tips

• Sections start collapsed on purpose — and each one tells you what's inside. The headline on every collapsed section (carriers writing, gate verdict, annual premium, risk band) is enough to decide whether to open it, so you can scan the whole Record without expanding anything. The Record leads with the score and the headline tiles, and every detail is one tap away rather than filling the page by default.
• Search the whole Record with Ctrl+F (⌘F), even the parts you haven't opened. Your browser's find-in-page reaches inside collapsed sections and opens the one holding the match — so looking for a carrier by name, a peril, or a dollar figure works on the Record as a whole, not just the sections you happen to have expanded. The map, photos, checklist and notes are the exceptions: those load only when you open them, so find won't reach them until you do.
• Ask the Advisor about anything on the page — it knows the property you're viewing, so you can ask "is this a hard market to place?" without leaving the Record. On the professional Record (agents, brokers and lenders) the Advisor starts tucked away so the score has the screen, and offers three questions about this home, picked for your role — an agent's on the required cost, how long cover takes to place and how to explain it to your client; a broker's on placement, whether it can be insured and the move most likely to lower the premium; a lender's on whether it can be insured, the flood requirement and the required cost. On a wide screen they sit at the top of your workspace panel; on a narrower one, above the Ask Advisor button. Tap one to open the Advisor and ask it; it's the same as typing the question yourself. The questions only mention figures your Record already shows you, and none appear while a Record is still building or locked. Home buyers and sellers get the Advisor as it works on other pages — it opens on its own once the page knows who you are, a moment after the Record appears — except that the "For you right now" card the Advisor shows on other pages isn't shown on a Record, for anyone.
• Model my mortgage payment and Estimate my proceeds sit under the cost figure — the cost tile for home buyers and sellers, the What will it cost? cell under the score for professionals. Mortgage opens the payment calculator already filled in for this home; proceeds opens the seller calculator for it.
• The glance cells under the score are the fastest way down the Record — tap one (for example Can it be insured? or What will it cost?) to land on that part. The recommended next step under them takes you straight to the section it names, already open, on a phone as well — a quote step opens our brokerage team's quote form right there, with no insurer to pick first (if your plan doesn't include quote requests you see what it takes to add them instead, and on the Sample Record it lands on Carriers), and "check the request you already sent" lands on your quote requests. There, the chips at the top do the same for every part. A link to any section (copy it from your browser's address bar after following one) lands whoever opens it on that section, already open — on a phone as well as a computer, including sections inside Evidence.
• Download PDF is in the workspace panel (or under the address on a narrower screen) — there's no separate "View Record" button any more, because you're already reading it.
• Print gives you a clean, CoverGuard-branded copy of the Record's analysis — the score, cost, carriers, risk, insurability and every other data section is expanded for you first, whether you use the Print button, Ctrl+P (⌘P) or "Save as PDF", so nothing is left out because it happened to be collapsed. The navigation chrome (nav bar, action buttons, the workspace panel, the Advisor) is left off the paper, and the file is named after the property's address rather than whatever page you printed from. The map, photos, quote requests, checklist and notes are left out of the print — they either can't finish loading in the moment before printing starts (the interactive map, the property photos) or are your own private workspace rather than Record content (the checklist, your notes); open the Record on screen for those.
• Comparing on a phone? The two Records stack one above the other instead of splitting the screen, so each stays readable.

• Tell us whether the Record helped (private preview). Not available to everyone yet — you'll only see it if it has been turned on for your account. At the very end of a Record you may see Was this Record helpful? with a Yes and a No. One tap saves your answer — nothing pops up, and nothing stops you reading or acting on the Record. Once you've answered you can Add a note (optional) saying what would have made it more useful; leave out personal or financial details. You can change your answer or edit your note any time — we keep your latest answer, not every one, and delete it two years after you last saved it. Your answer is private to our team: it isn't shown to anyone else, and you won't see a running score. You need to be signed in to answer, and it doesn't appear on the Sample Record.

Troubleshooting

• A panel is missing → it may be off for your role, or the upstream data source had no data for that location (e.g. surge zones only exist coastally). See Search & Records.
• No carriers → genuinely hard market, or risk still computing. Read the insurability note and re-check shortly.
• A peril says "Not assessed" → the public source had no determination for this exact location. It is deliberately excluded from the overall score rather than scored as low. Refresh to retry the source.
• Every peril says "Not assessed" → this is not a property with no hazards; it is a check that couldn't reach its sources. The Record holds that result for only 30 minutes before retrying, so reopening the property a little later usually fills it in — or hit Refresh to retry now. If it persists across refreshes, the upstream source is down; the status page tracks it.
• The Record timed out while loading → a first-ever check on a brand-new address runs a live lookup against a dozen public agencies and can take up to ~45 seconds. Reopen the property and it will be served from the saved snapshot.
• The premium looks higher than my renewal → the estimate prices a standard $1,000 deductible with no claims-free, bundling, or loyalty credits, so an existing policy with a high deductible and multi-policy discounts will usually be lower. Add your policy under Current home & policies to see them side by side.
• Record looks stale → hit Refresh to rebuild from fresh data.
• Buying, and you can't find the risk-adjusted value → it sits in the What this home could mean for you block, behind See risk-adjusted value, rather than beside the cost figure. If there is no such button, the value couldn't be modeled for this property — or, on a free Record, it is one of the things a paid plan adds.
• Decision history says "Could not verify" → the tamper check didn't finish this time, or none of these decisions was recorded with the check yet, so the history is shown but not confirmed. It is not a sign of tampering. Reopen the property in a moment to check again. Only "Chain intact" means the history verified.
• I can't see "Was this Record helpful?" → it's in private preview, so it may not be on for you yet. It also appears only when you're signed in, and never on the Sample Record. It sits at the very end of the Record, below everything else.
• "Your answer was not saved" → nothing about the Record changed. Tap Try again, or tap Yes or No again a moment later.
• The map won't zoom when you scroll → that's deliberate. Hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) and scroll, or pinch with two fingers; a plain scroll moves the Record so the map can't trap you partway down.

Do this next

Turn the answer into action — save the property, or take the next step toward binding.

• Requesting a quote
• Saving & comparing properties
• Branded reports & sharing