What Are Considered Other Structures on a Homeowners Policy?
Structures detached from your house, like a garage, fence, or shed. They're typically covered up to 10% of your dwelling coverage.
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What this means for your closing paperwork
If the property you're buying has a detached garage, a shed, or a fence, you don't need to add a separate line item for it. It falls under what your policy calls other structures, which is automatically set at around 10% of your dwelling coverage amount unless you ask for more. So if the house is insured to rebuild for $300,000, you'd have roughly $30,000 for everything detached from it combined. Walk the property before closing and think about whether that would actually cover rebuilding the garage or replacing the fence line. If the lot has an unusually large barn or workshop, that default percentage may not be enough, and you can ask your agent to raise it before you bind the policy.
Dwelling coverage estimates for the same house can vary between insurers, and the other structures amount moves with it. A higher dwelling number means more coverage for the garage or shed, but a higher premium too. Comparing quotes before you bind the policy shows where that tradeoff lands, so the detached structures on the property are covered for what rebuilding them would cost, not just the default 10%.
What counts as an other structure, and what doesn't
A detached garage, a shed, a fence, a freestanding deck, a gazebo, even a driveway or a mailbox post, all of these fall under other structures because they're not attached to the house itself. The test your policy uses is physical separation. If it shares a wall or a roofline with the house, it's part of the dwelling. If there's air between it and the house, it's an other structure. A carport counts. An attached garage usually doesn't, it's rolled into your dwelling coverage instead.
Some things on a property aren't covered by either category. Landscaping, trees, and plants are typically excluded or covered under a very small separate limit, often a few hundred dollars per item. Pools can be tricky. An in-ground pool is usually an other structure, but some insurers treat them differently or require you to say you have one, since pools raise liability questions too. A trampoline or play structure might fall under other structures, or it might affect what the insurer is willing to cover at all. Ask your agent to walk through what's on the lot specifically rather than assuming everything detached is automatically included.
Other structures coverage also doesn't follow you the way personal property does. If something is being used for business, like a detached workshop where the seller ran a shop, standard coverage often won't apply the same way, and you'd need to flag that use case before closing. Same with a detached structure that's rented out, like a guest house or a studio someone lives in separately. Those situations usually need an endorsement or a different kind of policy entirely, and finding that out after closing is a bad time to find it out.
Before you sign off on coverage, it helps to have the actual list of what's on the property in hand, not just a general sense of it. Walk the lot, note anything detached, and ask directly whether each one is covered under the default limit or needs its own line. A fence and a shed rarely stretch a 10% allowance thin, but a garage, a barn, or a pool house might. Getting that answer before you bind the policy is simpler than filing a claim later and learning the limit was lower than what rebuilding actually costs.
How claims on other structures actually work
Other structures coverage has its own limit, but it usually shares a deductible with the rest of your policy, not a separate one. If a windstorm takes down your fence and damages your roof in the same storm, you likely pay one deductible total, not two. Check your declarations page to confirm this, since a few policies do split them out, especially for wind or hail in some coastal states.
How much you actually get paid depends on whether your policy covers other structures at replacement cost or actual cash value. Replacement cost pays what it takes to rebuild the shed or garage today. Actual cash value subtracts depreciation first, so a ten-year-old detached garage might pay out far less than what a new one costs to build. This distinction often applies separately from how your dwelling is covered, so a policy can pay replacement cost on the house and actual cash value on everything detached from it. Ask directly which one applies to other structures on the policy being offered, not just which one applies to the house.
Liability matters here too. If a fence or a deck or a pool causes an injury, that falls under your policy's liability coverage, not the other structures limit. The other structures amount only pays to repair or rebuild the thing itself. A detached structure in poor condition, like a leaning shed or a deck with rotted boards, can also become a reason an insurer flags the property during underwriting, sometimes asking for repairs before binding coverage or excluding that structure from the policy entirely.
If the property has a structure that no longer exists, like a torn-down barn still listed on an old survey, make sure it's not quietly inflating an estimate or causing confusion at claim time. And if you plan to build something detached soon after closing, a workshop or a pool, it's worth asking now how adding it later would affect the other structures limit, rather than assuming the 10% default will stretch to cover whatever gets added to the lot down the road.
Before you bind the policy
Check the declarations page for the other structures limit and compare it to what's actually on the lot. If a garage, barn, or pool pushes past that default amount, ask the agent to raise it now.
