Replacement Cost Protection
Many standard homeowners policies cover your home or property for “actual cash value” rather than “replacement cost.”
Actual cash value is what your property is worth, minus a certain amount of depreciation, or normal wear and tear. Replacement cost is the amount it would cost to rebuild or replace your property with something of the same kind and quality, with no deduction for depreciation. Suppose your stove is destroyed in a kitchen fire. You bought the stove a year earlier for $1,100. After subtracting the amount of depreciation over a year, perhaps it’s only worth $900 in terms of actual cash value. That’s all you would be reimbursed for if you have standard homeowners coverage. If you add coverage for replacement cost, you might find that today it actually would cost $1100 to replace your stove with one of like kind and quality, and that is how much you would receive from your insurance coverage if you carried replacement cost coverage.