How to keep your home's records safe from a fire or flood
The best time to gather your home's records is before you need them. After a fire or flood, papers kept in the house are often gone, and finding copies takes weeks of calls. A record you keep now, somewhere else, takes minutes to share.
This page covers which records matter, how to keep them current, and where to store them.
The records worth keeping
After a disaster, your insurer may ask what the house had, and the IRS may ask what you put into it. If you sell one day, a buyer asks the same questions. The same records answer all three:
- The purchase. Your closing statement and deed.
- Big work on the house. Roof, siding, windows, additions, finished rooms, remodels. Keep the invoice, the date, and who did it.
- Systems. Heating, cooling, the water heater, the electrical panel. Keep the install date, the model and serial number, and the warranty.
- Permits for work that needed them.
- Your insurance policy, and the name and number of your agent.
- Photos. A walk through every room, inside and out, once a year. Take photos of big jobs before, during and after.
The IRS counts improvements as part of what you've put into the home (IRS Publication 523). That's one more reason to keep each invoice.
Keep it current
Records go stale fast. Make it a habit:
- When a job finishes, file the invoice and a photo that day. Note the date and the cost.
- When something new goes in, photograph the label with the model and serial number.
- Once a year, take a new set of photos of every room, and check your policy still matches the house.
A good time for the yearly check is before the storms or fires that are common where you live.
Store it away from the house
A fire safe helps, but a copy away from the house is safer. Keep at least one copy somewhere else:
- Online, in an account you can open from any phone.
- With someone you trust who lives elsewhere.
- In a safe deposit box, for papers that matter most, like the deed.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners gives the same advice for home inventories: keep them somewhere other than your home.
If the worst happens and your records are gone, see how to prove what was done to your house after a fire or flood.