Does Homeowners Insurance Cover Water Damage From Rain?

Rain can be soothing at times, plunking down on the window pales while you’re reading a good book in the living room. But, when it’s a torrential downpour or it seeps into your home, rain can also be a nightmare for homeowners.

While there are a variety of ways water damage can infiltrate your home, one of the most common forms of home insurance claims often involve rain — in many forms. The most commonly occurring form of rain is obviously liquid, but you can’t forget about the snowy powder form and the more detrimental frozen form: hail.

You can do many things to help prevent rain-related home insurance claims, such as keeping your gutters clean and inspecting your roof, but rain has a way of sneaking into small crevices, hail can cause damage no matter how prepared you are and snow buildup can get pretty heavy.

So let’s take a look at all the rain-related damage that can occur to your home and whether or not it’s covered by your homeowners insurance company.

Yes and no. Homeowners insurance will cover water damage from rain in many instances, such as if a tree damages your roof and allows rain to seep through or if your old roof starts letting rain through during a heavy storm.

But homeowners insurance won’t cover rain damage in instances like a heavy rainstorm that causes your property to build up water and seep through your home’s foundation. That would be considered flood damage.

We always recommend consulting with your insurance agent before filing a home insurance claim. But let’s take a look at a few different scenarios involving home damage and three common forms of rain not everyone has on their mind.

If heavy rains are responsible for damaging your roof, there’s a good chance you’ll be covered for the subsequent damage it causes. Let’s say a heavy storm knocks a tree onto your roof, punching a hole in it and allowing rain to filter through. You’d likely be covered for that damage because it was a freak accident.

If you didn’t realize your windows needed caulking until rain started pouring through the crevices during a storm, you’d likely be covered for any interior damage that rain caused as well. Additionally, many other rain damage scenarios would be covered, but it’s best to consult with your agent to get the specifics of your policy.

On the other hand, if you neglected to clean the gutters or downspouts to your home, they couldn’t handle the heavy rains and allowed rain to seep into the foundation or roof of your home, you likely wouldn’t be covered because negligence was at fault.

If heavy rains cause a buildup in your yard, or somewhere else, and seep into your home’s foundation or basement, your homeowners insurance likely wouldn’t cover the damage because it would be considered a flood. In that scenario, you’d need to have flood insurance to help cover the costs.

Fortunately, homeowners insurance covers snow damage, which is essentially just powdered rain. Similar scenarios apply to coverage for snow damage as they do for rain damage.

If snow builds up on your roof and causes it to collapse or partially break through, you’d likely be covered for the damage to your roof and your home’s interior. If snow or freezing caused a tree or something similar to fall onto your home and damage it, you’d also likely be covered for that damage.

However, you wouldn’t be covered if the snow melted around your property and that snowmelt seeped into your home’s foundation. To get coverage for that scenario, you’d also need a flood insurance policy.

Coverage for hail damage is one of the 10 names perils under many homeowners insurance policies, so your policy probably provides coverage for many damage scenarios involving hail. For instance, if hail were to damage your roof, siding, windows or something similar, your policy would likely cover those damages.

Hail is unpredictable and it doesn’t typically cause flooding, so your homeowners insurance policy would likely be the primary policy to cover any hail-related damage.

By using Clovered’s quick and easy online quoting tool, you can get a homeowners insurance quote in minutes! We partner with some of the leading insurance companies in the country so that we can provide you a custom policy that fits your needs — and your budget.