What Does a Clue Report Look Like?
It's a report listing your home's insurance claims history for the past several years, including dates, types and amounts paid.
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What shows up on it
The report lists each claim tied to the house. It names the date, what caused it, like water, wind or theft, and what the insurer paid. It usually covers the past seven years, pulled from a shared industry database most insurers report to.
Tied to the house
Claims follow the address and the person, so a claim filed by a previous owner can still show up on the report for your house. If your renewal jumped with no claim from you, it's worth checking whether an older claim is still being weighed.
Why a renewal rises anyway
A higher renewal without a claim usually traces to something other than your claims history. Rebuilding costs may have risen in your area, your insurer may have filed a broader rate increase, or your dwelling coverage was adjusted upward. Your declarations page shows if that coverage amount changed.
Checking for errors
You can request your own report and review it for mistakes, like a claim that was denied but still listed, or one that belongs to a different address. Errors can be disputed with the reporting agency before they keep affecting what insurers see.
If the report is clean and the price still climbed, the increase is coming from rebuilding costs, a rate filing, or a coverage change, not from anything tied to this house. That's worth testing against the market rather than accepting. Other insurers price the same risk differently, and a clean claims history is the strongest thing to bring into a comparison.
What a claim on the report actually looks like
Each entry is short. It lists a date, a cause of loss in a word or two like water damage or wind, a claim number, and the amount the insurer paid out. Some reports also show a status, like closed or open, and whether the claim was paid in full or denied. There's no narrative, no adjuster notes, no explanation of what happened inside the house. If you're picturing a long written account, it's closer to a bank statement line item.
A single water damage entry from five years ago, paid at a modest amount, reads very differently to an insurer than two water claims two years apart. Insurers look at frequency as much as cost. Two smaller claims close together can raise more concern than one large claim, because it suggests a pattern, like an aging roof or recurring plumbing issue, rather than a one-time event. If your report has more than one entry, it's worth noting how far apart they fall.
The report also lists inquiries, meaning times an insurer pulled the file even if no claim followed. Calling an insurer to ask whether something is covered can sometimes generate an inquiry without a claim ever being filed. This matters less than an actual paid claim, but it's part of why reports are worth reading line by line rather than skimming for dollar amounts.
If you've never filed a claim on the house, the report may still be worth pulling once, just to confirm it's empty or matches what you expect. It's free to request your own report, typically once a year, directly from the agency that compiles it. Seeing it firsthand is the only way to know whether the renewal increase has anything to do with the report at all, or whether it's coming from somewhere else entirely, like the broader rate changes mentioned above.
Who can actually pull this report
Insurers that write homeowners coverage can pull the report when you apply and again at renewal, which is how a prior owner's claim ends up shaping your price. Mortgage lenders sometimes request it during underwriting too. You can pull your own report at any time. Contractors, neighbors or anyone outside the insurance and lending chain cannot access it. It isn't a public record attached to the address the way a property tax history is.
Because the report follows both the person and the house, moving doesn't clear it and neither does selling. If you filed a claim at a previous home, that claim can still appear when a new insurer pulls your report at the new address, tied to you rather than to the walls. This is part of why two people with identical houses can get different renewal prices. Their personal claims histories differ even though the property risk looks the same on paper.
Checking your own report doesn't trigger anything with insurers and doesn't affect your price. It's treated as a personal credit-style inquiry, not an insurance inquiry, so pulling it to look is free of consequence. That makes it a reasonable first step whenever a renewal number doesn't match what you expected, before assuming the increase has anything to do with your history at all.
Agencies that compile these reports are required to let you dispute anything inaccurate, similar to how credit report errors get challenged. If a claim listed isn't yours, lists the wrong amount or shows as open when it was closed years ago, that dispute goes to the agency, not to your insurer directly. Resolving it before your next renewal is what gives a corrected report a chance to affect the next price you're quoted.
Before you renew
Pull your own CLUE report and check it against your declarations page. If the report is clean and coverage didn't change, the increase isn't about this house, so it's worth comparing prices elsewhere.
