Along with drones, hoverboards were a wildly popular holiday gift you may be excited to use now that the nice weather has arrived. With the excitement of your hoverboard comes the question of whether your homeowners insurance will cover it.

First, your homeowners policy classifies hoverboards as motor vehicles, since they are self-propelled vehicles. As such, coverage for motor vehicles are excluded under the homeowners policy unless they are used to service the residence premises or designed to assist the handicap. So, unless one of these two criteria applies to your hoverboard, there would be no coverage.

Coverage will vary in the liability portion of the homeowners policy, depending on the edition date of your policy. We can help you determine that date. For policies with an edition date of 2011, no coverage exists, but a couple of caveats do. First, the vehicle must be powered by one or more batteries (which it is) and it also must not be modified or built to exceed a speed of five miles per hour on level ground. The specifications of many of the hoverboard models indicate they are designed to go between five and 10 miles per hour. If this is the case, they will be excluded from liability coverage under your homeowners policy.

If your homeowners policy form precedes the 2011 edition, coverage does exist (with no constraints as to speed), but only at the insured location as listed on your declarations page.
Obviously, this can get a little more complicated than learning to ride the hoverboard itself, so we recommend giving our office a call in order to insure it properly.