Published by RGC Insurance
Replacement cost ≠ market value ≠ mortgage
Your Zestimate includes the land, the neighborhood, and the school district. Your mortgage reflects what you borrowed. Neither rebuilds a house. Replacement cost is labor and materials to reconstruct the same home on the same foundation at today's prices — and in much of Michigan it runs higher than market value, which is exactly when underinsurance bites hardest.
Build the number, don't guess it
- Start with an honest square-footage figure — finished space, then basement finish separately.
- Grade the quality honestly — builder-grade, custom, or somewhere between changes cost per foot dramatically.
- Count the features that cost money twice — full masonry, complex rooflines, custom kitchens and baths, outbuildings.
- Localize — rebuild costs Up North aren't Detroit-metro costs; contractor scarcity around the lakes is real.
Our replacement cost estimator walks through exactly this and hands you a defensible number to quote against.
The protections around the number
| Feature | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Replacement cost settlement | Pays to rebuild without depreciation — the baseline worth insisting on. |
| Extended replacement (125%+) | Headroom for the post-storm price surge every contractor in Michigan remembers. |
| Guaranteed replacement | Some carriers rebuild no matter the cost — the strongest promise available; ask which of ours offer it. |
| Inflation guard | Nudges Coverage A annually so the number doesn't rot between reviews. |
| Ordinance & law | Pays for code upgrades a rebuild triggers — older Michigan homes need this more than anyone tells them. |
The renewal habit that matters: rebuild costs moved hard these past years. If Coverage A hasn't been reviewed since you bought the house, that's the first fifteen minutes of our next conversation.