After the Marshall Fire destroyed over 1,000 homes in Colorado in December 2021, insurance adjusters asked survivors to list everything they'd lost. Most couldn't do it.
74% of affected homeowners discovered they were underinsured. Not because their policies were wrong - because they couldn't prove what they owned.
The Documentation Gap
The average American home contains approximately 300,000 items. When asked to list even a fraction of them from memory, most people fail catastrophically.
Studies show that homeowners with proper documentation recover an average of $8,000 more on insurance claims than those without. That's not a typo - eight thousand dollars lost to missing paperwork.
Why This Happens
1. The "I'll Do It Later" Problem
Creating a home inventory feels like a tedious task that can always wait. Until it can't.
The Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado exposed a hard truth: even when families pay their premiums and carry what looks like solid coverage, they can still be left hundreds of thousands of dollars short after a disaster. The gap isn’t just about policy limits—it’s about proof.
When more than 1,000 homes burned in hours on December 30, 2021, survivors quickly discovered that rebuilding their lives required more than a policy number. It required documentation. Insurers asked for detailed inventories: every couch, every tool, every pair of shoes, every appliance. For families who had just lost everything, reconstructing years of purchases from memory was nearly impossible.
Research from the University of Colorado Boulder, examining nearly 5,000 Marshall Fire claims, found that 74% of policyholders were underinsured. Over a third of those were severely underinsured, with coverage for less than 75% of actual rebuilding costs. As co-author Tony Cookson explained, if it costs $1 million to rebuild and insurance only covers 75%, the remaining $250,000 has to come from somewhere else—savings, debt, or painful compromises. Most households simply don’t have that kind of money.
But even people who technically had enough coverage often didn’t receive it. Why? Because they couldn’t prove what they owned.
Jackson White
Founder & CEO of VaultTag since 2022. With over three years of dedicated experience in home inventory technology and insurance documentation, Jackson developed VaultTag after witnessing families lose irreplaceable possessions in the Marshall Fire. He has helped thousands of homeowners protect their valuables through comprehensive digital documentation and works closely with insurance professionals to ensure proper coverage verification.
