CLUE Report: How Long a Claim Follows Your Home

By Plain Money Guide · Researched from official sources · Checked 2026-08-19 · Editorial standards

A claim only pays off if the check beats your deductible plus about five years of higher premiums.

A CLUE report holds up to seven years of your insurance claims, and even a phone call that paid you nothing can land on it. Here is how to pull yours free and read it.

C.L.U.E. stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, a claims database run by LexisNexis. When you apply for home or auto insurance, the carrier pulls your CLUE file before it quotes you. It is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which means you have the right to see it, and the right to make the company fix it when it is wrong.

Table of Contents

• What is actually on your CLUE file
• The inquiry trap: a claim you never filed
• The math that decides whether to file
• Not all claims are treated the same
• How to pull your report free and fix errors
• FAQ
• Where the decision actually splits

What is actually on your CLUE file

Each line is short: date of loss, loss type (water damage, wind, theft, liability), the amount paid, the policy number, and the status. There are no photos, no adjuster notes, and no explanation of fault. Two facts about the timeline matter more than anything else on the report:

• CLUE keeps seven years of history. That is the file's retention window, not the rating window.
• Most carriers underwrite on the last three to five years. A 2020 claim sitting in your file in 2026 is usually cosmetic. A 2024 claim is not.

The gap between those two numbers is where people get confused. A claim does not stop existing after three years, but it typically stops driving your price. If a quote comes back high and the only ding in your file is six years old, the price is coming from something else, so ask the underwriter what it was.

CLUE also runs on the property, not just the person. When you buy a house, the seller can pull a CLUE report for that address and hand it over; you cannot order one for a home you do not own. A property file showing two prior water losses will follow the house to you, and it is one of the few ways to spot a repeat plumbing problem before closing.

The inquiry trap: a claim you never filed

This is the part that catches careful people. You call your carrier to ask whether a $3,000 roof repair is worth filing. The rep runs the numbers, you decide not to file, and nothing is paid. Months later, a new insurer quotes you as a homeowner with a recent roof loss.

The line is not "did money change hands." It is whether you reported a specific loss. Here is where it splits in practice:

• Generic coverage question — "what is my wind/hail deductible?" or "does my policy cover a sewer backup?" No loss, no date, no file.
• Reported loss — you give a date of loss, a cause, and a location. That opens a claim number, and a closed-without-payment claim is still an entry.

So ask the hypothetical version first, and say plainly that you are asking about coverage, not reporting damage. If you have already opened one by accident, ask the carrier to close it as a no-loss inquiry and confirm in writing what will be reported. Withdrawing a claim does not always delete the entry.

The math that decides whether to file

A claim is worth filing when the check beats your deductible plus the premium increase you will pay for the next several years. Most people compare only the first two.

A worked example

Say your premium is $2,300 a year and your deductible is $2,500 (a 1% deductible on a $250,000 dwelling limit). A supply line lets go and the repair estimate is $6,800.

• Insurer pays: $6,800 − $2,500 = $4,300
• Surcharge for one paid claim: commonly 9% to 20% of premium, depending on your state, carrier, and the loss type. At 15%, that is $345 a year.
• Lost claims-free discount: often another 10%, or $230 a year.
• Total cost: $575 a year for the roughly five years the claim stays in the rating window = $2,875.

Net result: you are about $1,425 ahead, so file it. Now run the same policy against a $4,000 loss. The insurer pays $1,500, the claim still costs you $2,875, and filing loses you $1,375.

That gives you a usable rule of thumb: with a $2,300 premium and a 15% surcharge, the damage has to exceed your deductible by roughly $2,900 before the claim pays for itself. Your own number is five times the annual increase your carrier quotes you. Ask an agent what a single paid claim of that type does to your renewal before you decide.

Two claims in three years is the common trigger for nonrenewal at most carriers, and that risk does not show up in the arithmetic above. A second small claim can cost you the policy entirely and push you into a higher-priced market, which is worth far more than the deductible you were trying to recover.

Not all claims are treated the same

Loss type drives the surcharge more than the dollar amount does. Water and mold losses are the ones carriers price hardest, because a leak that happened once tends to happen again; a $5,000 burst-pipe claim can cost you more at renewal than a $30,000 hail claim. Weather catastrophe claims, where an entire ZIP code filed at once, are often not individually surcharged, though they can still lead a carrier to stop writing in your area. Liability claims (a dog bite, an injury on your steps) sit in a category of their own and are the hardest to shop away from.

How to pull your report free and fix errors

Under the FCRA you get one free disclosure every 12 months from each nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency, and CLUE is one of them. Request yours through the LexisNexis consumer portal or by calling 1-888-497-0011. There is more than one database, so check both:

Database	Run by	Years kept	What it covers	Free copy
C.L.U.E.	LexisNexis	7	Home and auto claims, by person and by property address	Online consumer portal or 1-888-497-0011
A-PLUS	Verisk	7	Property and auto loss history reported by member insurers	Verisk consumer inquiry request
Your carrier's own file	Your insurer	No legal cap	Every call, inquiry, and claim on your policy	Ask for your policy claim history in writing

Errors worth disputing: a claim that was never yours, a payment amount larger than the check you received, a claim listed as open that closed years ago, and an inquiry recorded as a loss. Dispute with LexisNexis in writing and attach proof (the final settlement letter, the closed-claim letter, the repair invoice). The agency generally has 30 days to investigate, or 45 if you send additional information mid-investigation. The CFPB's list of consumer reporting companies confirms which agencies owe you a free copy, and the FTC's dispute guidance covers the letter mechanics.

If a carrier raised your price or refused to renew based on the report, it owes you an adverse action notice naming the source. That notice also entitles you to a free copy of the report regardless of when you last requested one.

FAQ

Does asking my agent a question really show up?

Only if the conversation identifies a specific loss. A general coverage question does not open a file. Once you give a date of loss and a cause, the carrier can open a claim number, and closed-without-payment claims do appear on CLUE.

Can I get a claim removed just because it was small?

No. Disputes fix inaccuracy, not inconvenience. Accurate entries stay for the full seven years. What you can do is confirm the loss type and paid amount are right, since a miscoded water loss costs more than a correctly coded one.

I'm buying a house. Can I see its claim history?

Only the current owner can order the property's CLUE report. Ask the seller to pull it during your inspection period. Two prior water losses at the address is a reason to get the plumbing scoped, and it may also limit which carriers will write the home for you.

Where the decision actually splits

• Damage exceeds your deductible by more than five times the annual surcharge, and you have no claim in the last three years: file it. In the example above, a $6,800 loss on a $2,500 deductible nets $4,300 against roughly $2,875 in higher premiums. The trade-off is that you enter the next three years one claim away from the common two-in-three-years nonrenewal trigger.
• Damage is close to your deductible, or it is a water loss: pay it yourself. A $4,000 water loss on that same policy pays $1,500 and costs about $2,875, and water is the loss type carriers surcharge hardest. Fixing it out of pocket also keeps the address's property file clean for a future sale.
• You already filed one claim in the last three years: treat the second one as a policy decision, not a repair decision. The surcharge math may still work, but nonrenewal costs more than any single mid-size claim recovers.
• Your quote came back high and you don't know why: pull the free CLUE and A-PLUS files before you shop further. A no-payment inquiry logged as a loss is the single most common fixable error, and the agency has 30 days to investigate once you dispute it in writing.

This article is general information, not financial, legal, or medical advice. Rules and amounts change — verify with official sources or a licensed professional before acting.