Your goal: know whether a home is insurable — and what coverage will cost — before you make an offer, then request a quote from a carrier that's actually writing.
New to CoverGuard? Do Getting started first (signup, terms, navigation). This guide is your first-week playbook as a buyer.
What your workspace looks like
As a Buyer you get a lean, consumer-friendly set of tabs:
- Search — look up any address.
- Shop by budget — set a price + insurance budget, see homes that fit.
- Property — your saved homes and reports.
- Dashboard — your home base: your current home's risk, saved homes, and a
"do next" carousel.
- Toolkit — buyer calculators: mortgage, affordability, closing costs, property
tax, HOA, schools, walkability, insurance side-by-side, and more.
Plus the AI Advisor on the right of every page.
Your first week
1. Check a property you're considering
Go to Search, type an address, and read the report. Focus on:
- Overall risk + cost to insure at the top.
- Which carriers are binding and their indicative premium.
- Insurability — is this an easy place to insure, or a hard one?
Full walkthrough: Reading a property report.
2. Save the homes you're weighing
Click the star / Save on any property to keep it. Add notes and tags. Saved homes appear under Property and on your Dashboard. See Saving & comparing.
3. Compare your finalists side by side
Toggle Compare on up to 3 properties, then open the compare view to see risk, cost, carriers, and valuation lined up column-by-column. (Side-by-side comparison is a Professional-tier feature — the Compare button prompts an upgrade on the free plan.)
4. Record your current home & insurance (optional but powerful)
In the Toolkit (or the "My Current Home & Insurance" tool), enter your existing home address and current hazard policy — you can even upload the declarations page as a PDF and let the AI extract the fields. Now every new home you check is compared against what you already pay.
5. Model the real monthly payment
Open the Mortgage calculator (Toolkit → Mortgage Payment Calculator, or /tools/mortgage-calculator). Unlike other calculators, the insurance line is modeled per peril by the same engine your report uses — so your PITI is realistic, not a flat guess. Save scenarios to compare. See Mortgage calculator.
6. Shop by budget instead of one address at a time
Use Shop by budget to flip the search around: tell CoverGuard your home-price ceiling, your monthly (or annual) insurance-premium ceiling, and the area, and get back a list of homes that fit both budgets, each with a modeled premium. See Shop by budget.
7. Request a quote when you're ready
On a property you like, open Request a quote to send a binding-quote request to an active carrier. See Requesting a binding quote.
Free tier limits
Free buyers get 1 property search and 5 AI interactions lifetime. That's enough to try it on a real home. To check more homes, use the calculators freely, and request quotes, upgrade on /pricing. If you hit a cap you'll see a proactive usage prompt.
Tips
- Ask the Advisor things like "Is this flood risk a dealbreaker?" or *"Which of
my saved homes is cheapest to insure?"* — it can reason across your saved homes.
- Take a report home — share a report link with your agent or lender to talk it
through. Snapshot share links stay live for 90 days.
- The numbers are decision support, not a binding quote. Confirm final terms with
the carrier before closing.
Common buyer questions
See Search & reports troubleshooting and Billing & plans. Quick hits:
- "No carriers showed up." — The area may be genuinely hard to place, or risk data
is still computing. Re-check in a moment and read the insurability note.
- "Premiums say 'Modeled estimate'." — That's expected: they're modeled from risk
data, not a live carrier feed. Use them to compare homes, not as a final bill.
- "I used up my free search." — Free tier is 1 search lifetime; upgrade to continue.
Do this next
Check the one home you're most serious about and read its report top to bottom — that's the fastest way to know if it's a smart bid.