What Are Coverage A, B, C, and D on a Home Policy?

The short answer

On a standard homeowners policy, Coverage A is the house itself, Coverage B is the other structures on your lot, Coverage C is your personal property, and Coverage D is loss of use — the added living costs when a covered loss makes the home unlivable. The California Department of Insurance defines those four letters that way in its residential insurance guide, and the Texas Department of Insurance walks through the same standard set of coverages. Once you know the letters, you can read almost any declarations page.

Why your policy uses letters at all

Packaged homeowners forms are built on a shared skeleton, whoever sells them. Rather than renaming things company by company, the industry numbers the parts: Section I covers your property, Section II covers liability. The letters are just labels for the buckets, and your declarations page assigns a dollar limit to each one. That is the page worth keeping handy — everything below describes what the buckets mean, but only your declarations shows your actual numbers.

Coverage A — the dwelling

This is the structure you live in, including the things built into it: walls, roof, floors, built-in cabinets, the furnace, attached decks and attached garages. It is usually the largest limit on the page, and the other limits are often derived from it. If you want the longer version, see what dwelling coverage is and what counts as the dwelling.

Coverage B — other structures

Structures on your property that are separated from the house: a detached garage, a shed, a backyard workshop, a fence, sometimes a driveway gate. Coverage B typically carries its own limit, commonly expressed as a percentage of Coverage A rather than a separately chosen number.

Coverage C — personal property

Your belongings — furniture, clothing, electronics, kitchen gear, the stuff that would fall out if you turned the house upside down. Coverage C usually follows your things off the premises too, often at a reduced limit, and it tends to carry special internal caps on categories like jewelry, firearms, cash, and business property. The Texas guide also explains that belongings may be settled at replacement cost or at actual cash value, which is the difference between what a new one costs and what your used one was worth.

Coverage D — loss of use

If a covered loss makes the home unfit to live in, Coverage D is the bucket that handles the extra expenses of living somewhere else — the increase over your normal cost of living, not your whole new bill. The California guide groups it with the other three as part of the standard residential package. This one surprises people, because it pays for a situation rather than for an object.

The letters after D

Section II picks up where the property coverages end. Coverage E is personal liability, which responds when you are alleged to be legally responsible for someone else's injury or property damage. Coverage F is medical payments to others, a small no-fault limit for minor injuries to guests. Texas describes these alongside the property coverages as part of the six standard coverages on a homeowners policy.

A dwelling fire policy is a different animal

If your paperwork says DP-1, DP-2, or DP-3 instead of HO-3, you are holding a dwelling fire policy, not a homeowners policy. The North Carolina Department of Insurance explains that these forms are often used for rentals and unoccupied property, and they are built differently — narrower perils on the basic forms, and conditions a homeowners policy does not have.

Reading your own declarations

Find the box listing Coverage A through F with dollar amounts next to each. Note which deductible applies to which peril, since wind and hail sometimes carry a separate percentage deductible. Then check the endorsement list, because endorsements are where the lettered coverages get widened or trimmed. If a line item does not make sense, your agent or your state insurance department can tell you what that specific form says — and how the dwelling limit gets set explains where the biggest number comes from.