Whether the dwelling coverage on your policy would actually rebuild your house — and what a shortfall costs you at claim time. Planning estimate only, not an appraisal.
Your renewal jumped and the carrier said 'rates went up.' Here is what is actually driving it, how to tell whether yours outran your state's, and the four levers that genuinely move the number.
Flood and earth movement are excluded from every standard homeowners policy — and the clause that excludes them is written so a wind-and-water loss can be denied entirely. Here is what is out, and what fills each gap.
Non-renewed, cancelled, or declined: read the notice correctly, stop force-placed insurance, fix the reason code on it, and get the house insured again in 30 days.
The exact sequence to run when your house is damaged — mitigation, documentation, the claim call script, the adjuster visit, reading the estimate, and every escalation step in order.
Alaska guide
From Home Insurance in Alaska: What It Costs and What Actually Covers You
The most consequential number on your policy is your Coverage A limit, and the most common way it goes wrong is setting it to your home's market value or your mortgage balance.
Neither is right. Dwelling coverage should equal the cost to rebuild your home from the foundation up at today's construction prices. Market value includes land, which does not burn. Your mortgage balance is a financing number with no relationship to construction cost.
Alaska has an unusual version of this problem, and it runs in the dangerous direction. Alaska's median home price is about $420,506, while rebuild cost on a typical home runs above that — because Alaska construction is expensive and Alaska land, outside a few markets, is not. In most of the country, insuring to market value overstates what you need. In Alaska it frequently understates it.
Rebuilding in Alaska runs roughly $265 per square foot — the midpoint of a published $215 to $315 band covering materials, labor, and general contractor overhead and profit, excluding land.
On an 1,800 square foot home:
The band:
That is a $207,000 spread on the same house. Alaska does at least carry its own distinct cost band rather than sharing a regional band with neighbors — but no Alaska building department or insurance regulator publishes a competing rebuild-cost survey to check it against, so the $215 to $315 spread is the honest width of this number.
And in Alaska, more than almost anywhere, the statewide figure is the wrong tool for an individual house. Rebuilding in Anchorage and rebuilding in a village off the road system are not the same exercise. If materials and labor arrive by barge or plane, your real replacement cost can sit far above the top of that band. Get an actual replacement-cost estimate for your specific home, and make sure whoever produces it knows how your site is accessed.
Notice the headline result: a 1,800 square foot Alaska home costs about $477,000 to rebuild at the midpoint, against a $420,506 statewide median sale price. Set Coverage A from what you paid and you could start out $56,000 short.
Most homeowners policies contain a coinsurance provision requiring you to insure the dwelling to at least 80% of its full replacement cost. Fall below that and the insurer does not merely cap your payout at your limit — it reduces every partial claim proportionally.
Work it on the example. Full replacement cost $477,000, so the 80% threshold is $381,600. Suppose you carry the $300,000 reference limit instead, and a fire does $100,000 of damage. Your limit is three times the loss, so it feels safe. It is not:
You are more than $22,000 short on a claim well inside your policy limit, purely because Coverage A was set too low. None of that is visible until you file.
Read the full Alaska guide →14 min read · Updated 2026-08-28