Now that we’re into fall and people are spending more time indoors, it’s a great time to do a home inventory so you have a record of everything in case something catastrophic (e.g., a fire) happens.
Can you name the brand, model number, and price of your TV? Do you know where every little trinket or piece of jewelry is hiding? That kind of stuff adds up if your house accidentally burns down. I speak from experience: A couple of years ago, a house of mine was damaged by Hurricane Harvey, and I had to track everything that was in it. Luckily, it was an investment property and a lot of the stuff inside it was purchased on Amazon, so I was able to put together a pretty good list of all those items.In any case, there are a couple tips to remember to take a good home inventory.
The last thing you want to go through in the event of a disaster is struggling to remember all your possessions that were in the house.
First of all, you have the perfect device to take this inventory right in your pocket—your phone. Use your phone to take a video and some pictures of both the big-ticket items (e.g., the TV) and the smaller stuff in each room.
After that, use a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox to store your video and photos. The simplest option, in my opinion, is Google Drive. If you have a Google account, it’s free, and there’s plenty of storage. You can even use the spreadsheet to further itemize everything.
The last thing you want to go through in the event of a disaster is struggling to remember all your possessions that were in the house, so take a home inventory now. As they say, better safe than sorry.
If you have any more questions about this or any other real estate topic, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.