Burglarized, what does homeowners insurance actually pay?

What the theft peril actually covers

Theft is Peril 9 under Coverage C of the standard homeowners form, one of the named perils that applies to your personal property. It is broader than most people expect in one direction and narrower in three others. Broader: the peril covers not just completed theft but attempted theft, and "loss of property from a known place when it is likely that the property has been stolen." You do not need a suspect, a conviction, or even certainty, a likely theft from a known location is enough.

ISO HO 00 03 10 00, COVERAGE C, PERIL 9: THEFT (VERBATIM)

"a. This peril includes attempted theft and loss of property from a known place when it is likely that the property has been stolen. b. This peril does not include loss caused by theft: (1) Committed by an "insured"; (2) In or to a dwelling under construction…; (3) From that part of a "residence premises" rented by an "insured" to someone other than another "insured"; or (4) That occurs off the "residence premises" of: (a) Trailers, semitrailers and campers; (b) Watercraft of all types…; or (c) Property while at any other residence owned by, rented to, or occupied by an "insured", except while an "insured" is temporarily living there."

The narrowing runs three ways. First, the built-in exceptions above: theft by a household member, theft from a dwelling under construction, and theft from a room you rent out to a non-insured are simply not covered. Second, the deductible, on a hurricane-state policy the all-other-perils deductible is commonly $1,000 to $2,500, which erases small burglaries entirely. Third, and biggest by far: the special limits of liability, which cap the very categories burglars actually take.

Two quiet points in your favor elsewhere in the form: the earth-movement and water-damage exclusions both carve theft back in, "direct loss by fire, explosion or theft resulting from water damage is covered." A burglary made possible by a flooded, breached house is still a covered theft.

The sublimit wall, what the fine print caps

Your declarations page may show $150,000 or more of Coverage C personal-property protection. For the categories below, that number is irrelevant: each category carries its own hard cap per loss, not per item, and the caps have not kept pace with what the property is worth. These are the verbatim amounts from the ISO HO 00 03 specimen form; carrier forms vary a few hundred dollars in either direction, so check your own policy's "Special Limits of Liability" section.

Scheduled vs. unscheduled: the only way over the wall

Unscheduled property is everything under your blanket Coverage C limit, subject to the deductible, the sublimits, and (unless you bought replacement-cost contents coverage) depreciation to actual cash value. Scheduled property is individually listed on a personal articles floater or scheduled-property endorsement: each item described, appraised, and separately premium-rated.

Scheduling changes almost everything about how a theft loss pays. The sublimit disappears, the item is insured to its listed value. The deductible usually disappears. The covered perils broaden: most floaters cover "mysterious disappearance", the ring that is simply gone, which the base policy's theft peril often will not reach because you cannot show a likely theft from a known place. The trade is disclosure and maintenance: you need a current appraisal going in, and an appraisal that is a decade stale will underpay a market that has moved.

The decision rule is simple: any single item worth more than the category sublimit, the $3,000 watch, the $2,000 shotgun inherited from your grandfather, the camera kit, belongs on a schedule. The premium typically runs on the order of 1-2% of the item's value per year. It is the cheapest fix in this entire guide, and it only works before the burglary.

Off-premises theft: your policy follows the property

Coverage C insures personal property "owned or used by an insured while it is anywhere in the world." The laptop stolen from your hotel room in Atlanta and the golf clubs taken from your trunk are covered theft claims on your homeowners policy, same deductible, same sublimits. Three qualifiers matter:

Property kept at another residence you own or rent is capped at 10% of Coverage C or $1,000, whichever is greater, and theft from that other residence is excluded entirely except while an insured is temporarily living there. A furnished condo you rent out is not protected by your homeowners theft peril. Students get a carve-back: property at a dorm or student apartment stays covered as long as the student has been there within 60 days before the loss, a rule that quietly lapses over summer break. Vehicles are not the policy's problem: electronics in or on a car cap at $1,500 on the standard ISO form (check your own policy), and theft of the car itself is an auto-policy claim. Theft of trailers, campers, and watercraft is excluded off-premises altogether.

The inventory battle is won before the burglary

Every theft claim has the same structural problem: you must prove you owned property that no longer exists, to a skeptical audience, with paper. The policy makes the inventory a formal duty, "prepare an inventory of damaged personal property showing the quantity, description, actual cash value and amount of loss. Attach all bills, receipts and related documents that justify the figures." The insureds who clear that bar easily are the ones who built the record before anything happened.

The pre-loss protocol, one hour, once a year: walk every room with your phone recording video, narrating as you go. Open drawers, closets, the safe, the garage, the attic. Photograph serial-number plates on electronics, tools, firearms, and bikes; photograph jewelry laid out on a contrasting surface next to a ruler. Export order histories from the retailers you actually use. Scan receipts and appraisals for anything over a few hundred dollars. Then put all of it somewhere a burglar, or a hurricane, cannot take it: cloud storage, or a drive at work or a relative's house. An inventory that burns or walks out the door with the property it documents is worth nothing.

After a burglary: photograph everything before touching anything, the forced door, the pried window, tool marks, the ransacked rooms, empty hangers and open drawers. The point-of-entry photos matter more than they seem: they establish forcible entry, which defuses the fraud questions that follow every theft claim. Build the itemized list over days, not hours, and supplement the police report as items surface. Check pawn-shop databases and online marketplaces; recovered property changes the loss payment, and the policy requires you to report recoveries.

Police reports and the duties the policy imposes

ISO HO 00 03 10 00, SECTION I CONDITIONS, B. DUTIES AFTER LOSS (EXCERPTS)

"2. Notify the police in case of loss by theft; … 6. Prepare an inventory of damaged personal property showing the quantity, description, actual cash value and amount of loss. Attach all bills, receipts and related documents that justify the figures in the inventory; 7. As often as we reasonably require: … c. Submit to examination under oath, while not in the presence of another "insured", and sign the same; 8. Send to us, within 60 days after our request, your signed, sworn proof of loss…"

The police report is the only duty unique to theft, and it is not optional in practice. It creates the independent, time-stamped record that a crime occurred; without it, the claim rests entirely on your say-so. File it the day you discover the loss, get the report number immediately, and request the full report when it is ready. If the responding officer only lists the obvious items, supplement in writing as your inventory grows, a mismatch between a three-item police report and a forty-item insurance claim is a standard denial setup.

Note the modern form's one mercy: the carrier can deny for breach of these duties only if your failure is prejudicial to its investigation. Late or imperfect compliance is survivable; refusal is not. That distinction runs straight through the examination-under-oath cases below.

Empty houses: what vacancy does, and doesn't, do to theft

Here is a distinction worth real money. On the standard ISO homeowners form, the famous 60-day vacancy clause kills vandalism coverage and glass breakage coverage, but the theft peril carries no vacancy exclusion at all. The only construction-related theft exclusion is for dwellings under construction. So on the pure ISO form, a burglary at a house that has sat empty for months is still a covered theft.

Do not stop reading there. Many carrier-specific forms, especially in the Florida market, where non-ISO forms dominate, add theft to the vacancy exclusion, shorten the clock from 60 days to 30, or convert vacancy into a condition of coverage. Dwelling-fire (DP) policies on rental and inherited homes frequently exclude theft outright. The vacancy analysis also turns on a legal distinction courts have enforced for over a century: vacant means substantially empty of contents; unoccupied means the people are away but the furnishings remain. A snowbird's furnished house is unoccupied, not vacant, and an evacuated house is neither abandoned nor vacant. The full doctrine, with the case law, is in our companion guide: vandalism and the vacancy trap.

Post-storm looting: theft claims after an evacuation

Every major landfall produces a looting wave, and the looting wave produces a distinct species of theft claim. After Hurricane Michael flattened Bay County in 2018, the sheriff's office reported roughly 60 looting arrests, many of the targets storm-damaged homes whose owners were still displaced, plus more than 200 curfew-violation arrests. After Hurricane Ian in 2022, Lee County deputies charged crews from out of county with "burglary of an unoccupied structure during a state of emergency" for working evacuated neighborhoods and Fort Myers Beach businesses while the water was still standing.

Florida treats this as its own aggravated crime: under section 810.02(3), a burglary of a dwelling or occupied structure committed in a county under a declared state of emergency, facilitated by the emergency conditions, evacuations, curfews, power outages, stretched first responders, is a first-degree felony; burglary of an unoccupied structure during an emergency is elevated to a second-degree felony under section 810.02(4). That matters to your claim file as well as to the prosecutor, because it puts an official frame around what happened: a crime scene, not a coverage gray zone.

The insurance mechanics of a looting claim: theft remains a covered Coverage C peril, and your evacuation does not change that, a house you left under an evacuation order is unoccupied at most, and no standard form suspends theft coverage for a two-week absence. The genuine difficulties are evidentiary. When the storm itself breached the building, entry was not "forced," so the point-of-entry photos that normally anchor a burglary claim prove less, which shifts the weight onto your contents documentation. And you will be separating one loss into two files: storm-destroyed property goes on the hurricane claim against the hurricane deductible; stolen property goes on the theft claim against the smaller all-other-perils deductible. Photograph the interior before you evacuate, ten minutes of video on the way out the door, and the two files separate cleanly. Report suspected looting to law enforcement even mid-chaos: the report date is your proof the theft followed the storm rather than preceding it.

The examination under oath, explained

Theft claims draw more examinations under oath than any other homeowners loss, because theft is where carriers hunt hardest for fraud. An EUO is not a friendly recorded statement. It is formal sworn testimony, taken by the carrier's attorney under the policy condition quoted above, transcribed by a court reporter, with each insured examined separately, and it is a condition precedent to recovery.

Florida's courts have enforced that status bluntly. In Goldman v. State Farm Fire General Ins. Co., 660 So. 2d 300 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995), insureds who sued before sitting for their requested examinations were held to have forfeited coverage, no showing of prejudice to the carrier required at the time. Later Florida decisions have softened the edges, treating imperfect or late compliance as a fact question about substantial compliance and prejudice rather than automatic forfeiture, but outright refusal remains close to fatal, in Florida, South Carolina, and nearly everywhere else.

Practical rules: never skip a properly demanded EUO, and never attend one casually. You are entitled to reasonable scheduling, to counsel present, and to review documents before testifying. Bring your inventory and know it, the examiner will walk item by item through where you bought it, what you paid, and why it isn't on a receipt. Inconsistency, not poverty of paperwork, is what turns an EUO into a fraud referral: the policy's concealment-or-fraud condition voids coverage for material misrepresentation, and an innocent guess stated as fact reads as misrepresentation on a transcript. "I don't know, I'll check" is a complete answer. If the claim has reached the EUO stage, the carrier suspects something. That is the moment to talk to a policyholder attorney, not after the transcript exists.

Florida vs. South Carolina

Deadlines shown are general rules as of July 2026 and have exceptions. Confirm statutes and case summaries on this page against current law and your policy before acting.

Theft claims, the questions everyone asks

Not legal advice; consult an attorney about your specific claim. Policy language quoted from the public ISO HO 00 03 10 00 specimen form; your policy's wording controls.