Documenting Damage for an Insurance Claim: The Homeowner's Field Guide

The three types of documentation carriers want

Photos, video, and a written inventory. Photos capture detail. Video captures context. Written inventory ties everything to values. All three matter — carriers use all three.

How to photograph structural damage

Start wide, then close. A wide shot from the doorway shows the whole affected area in context. Move in for details: water lines on walls, warped baseboards, ceiling stains, delaminated flooring. Include something for scale — a tape measure or a common object.

Photograph from at least three angles for every damaged item. Turn the flash on for anything under a cabinet, in a corner, or in low light. Overexposed photos are useless.

How to video-walk the property

Slow, narrated video walkthrough — one continuous take per floor. Narrate as you walk: room name, what happened, what you see. This becomes the definitive record of loss at a moment in time and cannot be faked or reconstructed later.

Contents inventory

For every damaged item: item description, brand, model if known, approximate purchase date, approximate purchase price, condition before loss. Photograph the item and, if possible, the tag or serial number.

A spreadsheet works. So does a note in your phone. Insurance carriers accept both. What matters is that it is complete and matches your photos.

Storage and backup

Keep copies in at least two places — cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox) and a physical copy on a USB drive stored off-site. Local files lost with the house help no one.