Someone Ran Into My Garage Door

Remember liability insurance on any type of insurance policy does not cover damage you cause to your own property and collision insurance only covers your car.

Someone ran into my garage door.

A person is more likely to have garage door damage covered under their homeowners insurance policy than their comprehensive car insurance even if they drove the car they owned into the garage door of the house they owned. This is no different from driving into any other home s garage door. We get calls about once a week from someone who backed into their garage says jon jacobs owner of sound door services in renton washington. Now i want to recover the cost from the tenant.

A tenant who is on a month to month leaserecently drove his car into the garage door on my rental property causing irreparable damage to the door. A typical standard homeowner s policy protects the policyholder for damages to their dwelling and connected structures like a garage caused by such hazards as fire smoke theft vandalism windstorm and other things including vehicles. If the landlord has a video of who caused the damage or if the dent in the garage door happens to line up with your bumper or match the paint on your car the more likely you are to be found at fault. They can then send the copied signal to your garage door opener and open the door.

Liability really comes down to proof. You ll need to check your specific policy to see what they cover. However the only way to get a legal resolution would be for someone to file suit. Even if your door appears to be functioning properly it s still wise to have it inspected in case there are any underlying issues that should be addressed.

3 most standard homeowner s policies explicitly list vehicles among those damage causing hazards covered. A family member pulls into the driveway crashes into the garage door and wrecks it. The situation should be taken seriously. The garage door is probably the largest moving part of your property so your first step should be to call a professional garage door technician to assess the damage.

If you rent your home and run into the garage door of your rental home then you have damaged the property of your landlord so he would file a claim against your auto insurance liability policy. Most of the time when a person wrecks their garage door it s the bottom section that that gets hit. Will collision insurance cover all the damage. Collision coverage on your car insurance policy will cover the damage to the car and homeowner s insurance will cover damage to the garage door.

I contracted with a local shop to replace the door at my expense because i didn t trust the tenant to replace the door to my satisfaction. And if you ve had an electric garage door opener installed it s likely that the door will still be able to lift almost completely. Your standard opener has enough power to lift a load of around 350 lb. In fact many people crash into their garage doors in the winter after sliding on ice.