Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Get a CLUE Report if your buying a home

The purchase contract for a home usually contains a stipulation for financing and a home inspection. These stipulations allow the buyer to back out of the contract if they cannot get a mortgage or the inspection turns up something wrong. But another not well known report to show the buyer the insurance history of the house should always be requested. That report is called the homes CLUE report. 
 
The Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report will tell you what kinds of insurance claims have been filed by the previous owners. Why is this important to you as a buyer? The current owner may have forgotten to tell you about some past damage to the house. The CLUE report will tell you the exact date of loss, type of loss (water damage, mold, fire, etc.) and the amount of loss for all claims. Also it will tell you if it has a long history of claims which may get you denied home insurance which will impact if you can even get a mortgage. You may not get denied coverage, which is rare, but you may be put in a high risk pool or paying more than you should if the house was not messed up insurance wise. 
 
If you are going into contract it makes sense to put the CLUE report stipulation in it. This way you can make sure it's clean and if not straighten out the inaccuracies. Go to Choicetrust.com for the report. 


1 comment:

  1. Sounds like some good advice. I never heard of this before.

    ReplyDelete


Join 1000's of People Following 50 Plus Finance
Real Time Web Analytics