Many homeowners, especially rookies who are new to the game, have no clue what their homeowner's insurance policies cover.

Buyers know they must have insurance, or their lender won't provide the financing. And they should know they must keep coverage in place, or the lender could call their loans due and payable in full. (As an alternative, the lender could put a policy in place at a much higher premium, tacking the extra cost onto the owner's monthly house payment.)

But as for knowing what's covered? Most people don't even read their policies.

That's understandable, considering most policies are written in legal gobbledygook that few of us can understand. But when you don't know what's covered and what's not, you could be in for a big surprise when the time comes to make a claim.

Here, then, with a nod to the Insurance Information Institute and other sources, is a basic primer on insurance coverage.

A standard homeowner's policy has four types of coverage: the structure itself, your personal belongings, liability and additional living expenses.

Structural coverage pays for repairing or rebuilding the house if it is damaged by fire, lightning, wind, hurricane or other disaster listed in the policy. The most popular policy, known as HO-3, offers the broadest coverage, protecting against 16 enumerated perils.

The personal belongings section covers your furniture, clothing and other personal items if they are stolen, or if they are destroyed by an insured disaster.

Liability coverage protects you from lawsuits for injury or damage caused to other people by you, your family members or even your pets. It also pays for the cost of defending you, as well as any court awards, up to the policy's limit. And it covers not just your house, but you -- anywhere in the world.

If your house is uninhabitable because of damage from a listed peril, the insurer typically will pay for your hotel, restaurant meals and other living expenses while the place is being rebuilt. If your house is a rental, and your tenants are unable to live there during repairs, the policy may even cover "loss of use" -- meaning it will pay you the rent you couldn't receive during your tenants' absence.

While an HO-3 policy is the most popular, others are available. An HO-1 policy sets bare-bones coverage, while an HO-2 offers slightly more (but less than an HO-3). An HO-4 policy is for people who rent single-family houses, and covers their personal belongings against all 16 perils. And an HO-6 policy is for those who own condominiums, covering their belongings and the parts of the structure they own.

As important as what's covered by your policy is what's not covered. Floods are not, for example, so you'll need a separate policy for that. Sometimes, flood coverage is required to obtain and maintain financing, but even if it's not, it's a good idea to give it a long, hard look. Floods can occur anytime, anywhere -- and not just from gigantic storms.

Other typical exclusions include damage from earthquakes, war, pollution, nuclear accidents, intentional damage, normal wear and tear, construction defects, vehicles parked on the property, frozen pipes and vandalism.

Once you settle on the specific policy, you need to choose one of three levels of coverage:

-- Actual cash value: Pays to replace or repair the home and replace your possessions, less a deduction for depreciation.

-- Replacement cost: Pays the same as above but without deducting for depreciation. Note: Whereas replacement-cost policies cover the structure, they do not cover anything above the actual cash value of your possessions.

-- Guaranteed or extended replacement cost: As the highest level of protection, guaranteed coverage pays whatever it costs to rebuild the house as it was, even if it exceeds the policy's limits. An extended policy pays for a certain percentage -- usually 20% to 25% -- over the limit.

While this protects against sudden increases in construction costs when there's a shortage of materials after a major, widespread disaster, it won't pay to bring your place up to current building codes. For that, you'll need an "ordinance or law endorsement," which will help pay the extra freight.

Obviously, the more coverage you purchase, the higher your premium. The amount you pay also is governed by your deductible: The larger the deductible, the lower the rate.

But you shouldn't stop there. Beyond flood coverage, you'll want to add riders, aka endorsements, to your coverage to cover any items you may have that are excluded from your standard policy.

The list of excluded items is a long one: jewelry, business equipment, wine collections, luxury rugs, antiques, furs, silverware, watercrafts and fine art, to name a few.

Once you put coverage in place, it's a good idea to perform an annual insurance checkup to make sure your property is still protected at its current value -- up or down -- as opposed to what it was worth when you put the policy in place. To protect against that, consider an inflation guard endorsement so that coverage is automatically increased every year.

Your annual review should also cover your riders. Maybe you no longer own that beautiful mink coat, for example, or perhaps you bought a van Gogh to hang on your living room wall.

NEXT WEEK: Flood coverage.

Not to downplay the pending foreclosures and evictions faced by millions of families, but the current national furor is a bit overblown.

The possibility of losing your home is not to be taken lightly, for sure. But foreclosures and evictions are not events, but processes. And in some cases, they could take months or even years.

Let's look at evictions first. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reinstituted a ban on evictions. The original moratorium expired July 31, but now tenants are relatively safe until Oct. 3. If the new order stands up to legal challenges, it will cover communities experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases -- meaning about 80% to 90% of the country.

Either way, evictions are not instantaneous; they take time. Your landlord can't just move your stuff to the street at will. He or she has to follow state and local laws, which can vary widely.

Let's look at Massachusetts as an example. If you have been unable to pay your rent, your landlord must first send you a 14-day "Notice to Quit" your tenancy. The notice will set a court date, at which time you can present a written response stating why you should not be evicted. If you lose the case, you have 10 days to file an appeal and request a new hearing.

Even if you lose again, you can't be removed until 10 days after the judge issues an eviction order. Then you must receive written notice of the eviction at least 48 hours in advance. If my math is correct, this gives a renter in the Bay State a 36-day cushion.

Foreclosures usually take longer -- much longer. Once a mortgage is 90 days past due, the loan is considered in default. At that point, the lender issues a notice of default that says foreclosure proceedings will commence in 90 days if payments are not brought up to date by then.

That gives you three months to make good. If you fail, the lender can petition the court to auction the property at foreclosure, and that step could give you even more time before you can be evicted.

In jurisdictions that allow nonjudicial foreclosures, filing the necessary paperwork is all that's needed to get the ball rolling. But even in West Virginia -- currently the state with the fastest foreclosure process, according to credit reporting company Experian -- it still takes 48 days, on average, to complete the process.

If you live in a state that requires judicial foreclosures, the process could take substantially longer because of backlogs. And some states, Experian says, have consumer protection laws that further prolong the proceedings. In Arizona, the state with the lengthiest foreclosures, the entire process takes more than five years.

None of this is to say someone facing eviction should take that possibility lightly. Rather, they should get on their horse and do whatever they can to save their home. That includes contacting a federally approved housing counselor to help navigate the process.

But act quickly. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project has found tens of thousands of incidents in which corporate landlords and private equity firms have moved against tenants, even when the initial eviction moratorium was in place.

For tenants, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (cfpb.gov) has a rental assistance finder that tenants can use to locate aid. And the Eviction Lab at Princeton University (evictionlab.com) has a list of more than 600 community resource organizations working to prevent evictions. If you can afford it, you might want to consult an attorney.

For financially strapped homeowners, Uncle Sam is offering new ways for borrowers to get back on track. Currently, they apply only to borrowers whose loans are touched by the federal government in some way, but other lenders often follow suit.

Here is some of the help now available:

-- In addition to traditional loss-mitigation options, the Federal Housing Administration is now requiring servicers who administer FHA-insured loans to offer zero-interest subordinate liens to eligible homeowners who are able to resume their existing mortgage payments. If you cannot do so, the servicer can extend the term of a mortgage to 360 months at market rate and target a 25% principal and interest reduction.

-- The Veterans Administration will purchase borrowers' past-due payments and unpaid principal, subject to certain limits. In some cases, the agency will lower a borrower's payments by 20%. The deferred indebtedness will become a junior lien that won't accrue interest and will not require monthly payments. It will become due only when the property is sold or the loan is paid off.

-- The Rural Housing Service now permits a 20% reduction in a borrower's monthly payments and offers a combination of interest rate reduction, term extension and mortgage recovery advance.

-- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have extended the moratorium on booting occupants from properties they have acquired through foreclosure or deed-in-lieu-of foreclosure transactions, but only until Sept. 30. Their conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Board, is also encouraging landlords of rental properties financed by mortgages touched by Fannie and Freddie to apply for emergency rental assistance before starting an eviction process.

If you think you qualify for any of these options, move quickly. The system is likely to be strained to the limit as loan servicers struggle to work with the millions of owners facing foreclosure.

Ben Graboske, president of data-crunching firm Black Knight, put it this way: "The operational challenge this represents is staggering."

The way homebuilders erect and sell their products is changing.

Not to any great degree. So-called "stick building," in which houses are put together piece by piece at the job site, is still the norm. And most builders are still using model homes to show off their wares in the best light possible.

But slowly and surely, they are changing the way they do business -- some say for the better.

In Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs, for example, upscale builder Van Metre Homes is toying with putting up townhouses comprised of various modules. And several firms are pushing forward with 3D-printed houses -- mostly one-offs, but in at least one case, an entire (albeit small) community.

Modular construction isn't new. It is a more efficient way to build because it limits waste under factorylike conditions, and it's often less expensive. Even so, it accounts for only 3% of all new houses, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

But Van Metre's experiment takes it to another level. In partnership with Joseph Wheeler, a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech, the builder's POWERHaus product will include such cutting-edge technology as ductless HVAC systems, energy control panels that track consumption, electric car-charging capabilities and induction cooking that limits the amount of heat that escapes into the house.

Once the sections are trucked to the site and assembled using Wheeler's "plug-and-play" concept, solar panels will be added to achieve "net zero" status, in which the units should produce at least as much energy than they consume.

Meanwhile, in Richmond, Virginia, a 3D-printed home construction company called Alquist is erecting a 1,550-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two baths. The expected selling price is about $210,000, but energy-saving features are expected to cut utility costs in half (from those of a traditional home).

The house was built with concrete, extruded row upon row until it reached the prescribed height. That alone is projected to cut costs by 15% per square foot. But it was also built in under 15 hours -- as opposed to the normal four weeks -- and with a crew of just two. In this house, Alquist printed only the exterior walls, but the company says it will also build interior walls in future houses.

Concrete construction isn't new, either. But only 8% of new houses are concrete-framed, whereas 91% are wood-framed, NAHB reports. (The other 1% are steel.) Builders shy away from these and other methods largely because they can't find experienced workers. They also cite cost as an issue. But with the cost of lumber so high, that could be changing.

Whereas most 3D-printing construction endeavors have focused on urban areas, Alquist is taking particular aim at rural locations -- many of which face even greater affordable housing challenges than big cities. The company, which also is working with Habitat for Humanity, intends "to build homes for people who live outside of the places where most funding for housing programs is spent," said CEO Zachary Mannheimer.

Elsewhere, ICON, an Austin, Texas-based company that uses a giant 3D printer and concrete as a substrate, has built six such houses in a 51-acre master-planned property. And in Rancho Mirage, California, Mighty Buildings, in conjunction with a local developer, will put up 15 houses that are built in panels. The panels will use a polymer material comparable to synthetic stone, and will be assembled at the site.

"In early 2018, there were no 3D-printed houses in North America," said ICON CEO Jason Ballard. "Now we're gearing up for hundreds."

Selling is changing, too, with at least two major builders going far beyond 360-degree video tours. Now, you can design and buy a house completely online without ever leaving the comfort of your living room.

With the new reservation system from Taylor Morrison, the nation's fifth-largest homebuilder, customers can choose a floor plan, select a home site using an interactive map and reserve the house -- all online. The tool complements technology that the company unveiled last year, including 3D virtual tours, self-guided tours and an online shopping cart.

The system "takes the friction out of homebuying," said CEO Sheryl Palmer. "Consumers crave ease and simplicity, whether they're purchasing a car, groceries or a new home."

Similarly, the Atlanta-based Pulte Group, which has operations in more than 40 markets, is now offering a fully integrated online process where buyers in some of its communities can complete the entire transaction, including securing financing.

"The events of 2020 dramatically accelerated the transition to online shopping, as more people are purchasing a broader array of products and services than ever before," said Pulte President Ryan Marshall. The online option lets buyers "purchase their new homes on their own terms and timeline," he said.

Added regional president Brandon Jones: "Now the last piece of the online homebuying process is in place: the ability to click and buy."