What Does a Clue Report Look Like?
It's a table listing each claim on your home. It shows the date, the type, what was paid, and who filed it.
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Why your CLUE report matters right now
If you got dropped or non-renewed, the insurer that cut you loose likely pulled your CLUE report and saw a pattern it didn't want to keep insuring. Every company that quotes you next will do the same, so what's on that report shapes what the next few months look like. Water and roof claims weigh heaviest, even small ones, because insurers read them as signs of more to come. You can order your own copy to see exactly what they see. Check it for claims that aren't yours, duplicate entries, or a water claim that was actually a one-time plumbing fix, since those can be disputed. A clear explanation for an old claim helps more with a new insurer than silence does.
The same report, a different answer
One insurer read your CLUE report and walked away. Another may read the same claims differently, especially once you've checked it for errors and can explain what happened. Compare quotes and see who still wants the risk.
Can you get a claim removed from your CLUE report?
Yes, but only if it's wrong. CLUE reports come from the insurers that filed the claims, and mistakes happen more than people expect. A claim listed under your address from a previous owner, a claim marked paid when it was actually withdrawn, a duplicate entry from a system error. Those get fixed when you dispute them with the company that reported them, or through LexisNexis, which maintains the database. The process takes a written request and usually a few weeks.
What you can't do is get an accurate claim removed because it's inconvenient. If you filed it and the insurer paid it, it stays on the report for seven years regardless of how it affects your next quote. Some people try calling the insurer back to "cancel" a claim after the fact, hoping it disappears. It doesn't work that way once a payment has been made. The claim is a record of something that happened, not a flag you can unset.
The seven-year window matters for planning. A roof claim from six years ago will drop off soon and stop counting against you. One from last year has a long time left on the report. This is part of why timing a move between insurers sometimes helps, since a company looking at your file next spring sees a different picture than one looking at it today. It's also why some homeowners choose to pay small claims out of pocket instead of filing, to keep the report clean for the years that follow.
If your CLUE report is accurate and the claims are real, the better move is usually explaining them rather than fighting them. A burst pipe that got fixed with new shutoff valves, a roof that was fully replaced after the claim rather than patched. Insurers that quote you new coverage are often more interested in whether the underlying problem was actually solved than in the fact that a claim exists at all.
What does a CLUE report actually look like
It's not a letter or a summary paragraph. It's a table, usually a few pages from LexisNexis, with one row per claim going back seven years. Each row has the date the claim was filed, the type of loss (water damage, fire, wind, liability), the amount paid, and the insurer that reported it. Your name and the property address sit at the top, and the claims are tied to whichever of the two you're pulling the report for, since CLUE tracks both people and houses separately.
Some rows will have more detail than others. A water claim might just say the date and the amount paid, with no explanation of whether it was a slow leak behind a wall or a washing machine hose that burst. That's one reason insurers lean so heavily on claim type alone. The report doesn't tell them you replaced the plumbing afterward. It just shows a dollar amount next to the word water, and they fill in the rest with their own assumptions.
If a claim was filed but never paid, it usually still shows up, sometimes marked as closed without payment. This surprises people who called their insurer, asked a question about coverage, decided not to pursue it, and assumed nothing would be recorded. In many cases an inquiry alone gets logged. That's part of why two homeowners with the same amount of actual damage can have very different-looking reports. One made a call and ended up with an entry. The other didn't.
At the bottom of the report there's typically a summary line showing the total number of claims and total amount paid across the full seven-year window. This is often the first thing an underwriter looks at before reading the individual rows. A single large claim and three small claims can produce the same total, but insurers tend to read multiple claims as a pattern even when each one was minor and unrelated. That's worth keeping in mind when deciding whether a small claim is worth filing at all.
Before you request quotes
Pull your own CLUE report and check the total at the bottom against the individual rows. If a small, unrelated claim is dragging down how the pattern reads, that's worth explaining upfront.
