09/03/2026
Your house has a credit report
Your insurance company pulls it before they quote you. It follows the address, not just the person. The last owner's water leak from 2021 is on it. You have never seen it, and it's free
It's called a CLUE report, run by LexisNexis, and here's what's in it:
Seven years of insurance claims tied to your address. Every claim filed, the date, the type (water, wind, fire, theft, liability), and what was paid out. Insurers report into it and read out of it. When you call for a homeowners quote, the agent types in the address and the price you're given is shaped by a history you didn't know existed
Two things about it that should p**s you off:
1. A claim that paid $0 can still be on it. You called about a roof leak, the adjuster came, it fell under your deductible, nothing was paid. The claim exists. The address now has a "water loss" on its record
2. Because it's tied to the property, you inherit the previous owner's decisions. Buy a house where the last family filed three small claims and you can pay for their habit for years
And that's before the thing insurers are actually panicking about right now: roofs. Many companies won't write a new policy on a roof older than 15 to 20 years without an inspection, and some won't write it at all. The roof age is on the permit record. The permit record is public. They check. Most buyers don't
Here's the whole playbook:
IF YOU OWN A HOUSE: pull your own report. It's a consumer report under the same federal law as your credit report, so you get a free copy. consumer. risk. lexisnexis. com, or call 1-866-897-8126. Read it. If there's a claim on there that isn't yours or is wrong, you dispute it the same way you'd dispute a credit report error, and they have to investigate
IF YOU'RE BUYING A HOUSE: you can't pull the seller's report. So you make them do it. Write it into your offer: "Seller to provide a copy of the CLUE report for the property." It's a free request. A seller who refuses just told you something
BEFORE YOU FILE A SMALL CLAIM: do the math out loud. A $3,100 water repair against a $2,500 deductible pays you $600 and puts a water loss on the address that can raise your premium for years. Sometimes the right move is to eat the $3,100 and keep the record clean. Insurance is for the house burning down, not for the dishwasher line
BEFORE YOU BUY: ask the age of the roof, in years, in writing. If the answer is "I'm not sure," pull the permits. A 19-year-old roof is not just a $12,000 expense coming. It might be a house you can't insure at closing, which means a house you can't get a mortgage on
"If I'm paying for insurance, why wouldn't I use it?"
Use it for the big stuff. Just understand that every claim is also a data point that prices your next 7 years, and that whoever buys your house someday inherits it
Insurance companies don't remember your name. They remember your address
