CLUE Report: The Claims File Your Insurer Reads Before They Decide to Keep You

There is a seven-year claims file on your house at LexisNexis called the C.L.U.E. Property report, and your insurer reads it before every renewal and every new-policy quote a buyer’s carrier runs. You can request it free once every 12 months at consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com or by calling 866-897-8126, and LexisNexis must deliver it within 15 days (CFPB). If the file is accurate and bad enough that every carrier prices the house the same way, Skip The Agent buys as-is with a written offer in 24 hours and closes in 7 days with no financing contingency and no bound-policy requirement at the table.

You have paid your premium for years, then the non-renewal letter showed up, and nothing in your memory explains it. The carrier’s letter mentions “loss history” and moves on. That loss history has a name, a file number, and an address attached to your house, and you have never seen it.

This article is for you: the homeowner who got dropped or repriced and does not know why, the seller who is about to list a house that has had two water claims in the last five years, and the landlord whose insurer suddenly wants a 40% premium jump on a rental you have owned since 2011. What is in that file, how to read it, how to dispute it, and what to do when the file is accurate and the damage is done, all of it below.

What C.L.U.E. Actually Is

C.L.U.E. stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. It is a database run by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and the CFPB confirms it holds up to seven years of homeowners insurance and personal property claim history used by carriers to make underwriting and pricing decisions.

The version that matters when you own or sell a house is called C.L.U.E. Property. The version that follows you personally is C.L.U.E. Auto. They are separate products. When a carrier quotes your house, they pull the Property file tied to the address.

What sits inside a single claim entry:

Date of loss
Type of loss (water, fire, theft, wind, hail, liability, other)
Amount paid by the insurer
Claim status (paid, closed without payment, open)
Property address the claim is attached to
Insurance company that handled the claim

Seven years is the retention window the CFPB names. A claim from eight years ago should not appear. A claim from three years ago will.

The Part That Surprises People

A claim can appear on your C.L.U.E. Property report even when you were paid little or nothing.

This is the piece most homeowners never hear until it costs them. The CFPB is direct that the file contains claims and losses, and industry practice at carriers has treated a reported loss as a data point regardless of the final payout amount. If you called your agent to ask whether a specific event would be covered, and the agent opened a claim file to check, that inquiry can end up recorded as a loss event depending on how the carrier logged it.

The safe read: assume anything you report to your insurer creates a data point, and verify what is actually on your file before you assume otherwise. This is why long-time agents tell homeowners not to file small claims. A $1,800 water damage payout that raises your premium $600 a year for the next five years is a $1,200 loss on top of the deductible you already paid.

Answering the question directly:

Does filing a home insurance claim raise your rates? Yes, in most cases a paid claim raises your premium at renewal, and the surcharge persists for several renewal cycles rather than one. How long it lasts is set by your carrier and your state’s rate filings, so there is no single national number, and your agent can tell you what your carrier applies. Frequency matters more than dollar amount, so two small claims within three years often costs more in future premium than one larger claim.

How a Carrier Actually Reads Your File

Underwriters do not react to a single claim the same way across the board. They read patterns.

Two water losses in three years is the pattern that gets houses non-renewed faster than almost any other. Water damage and freezing generate 1.61 claims per 100 policies a year, second only to wind and hail at 2.82, on the Insurance Information Institute’s 2018 to 2022 averages. The difference is what each one tells an underwriter. A repeat water loss says the plumbing, the roof, or the grading has an underlying problem the last repair did not fix, and the next claim is a matter of when.

One hail claim in a neighborhood where every roof got hail reads differently. The carrier can see the storm event, they can see the ZIP code claim volume, and a single weather claim in that context is not a red flag against you specifically. It is one event.

Frequency beats severity in underwriting. Three claims of $2,000 each will hurt your renewal more than one claim of $18,000. The insurer’s model is predicting your next 12 months, and frequency is what predicts frequency.

How long do claims stay on your C.L.U.E. report? Seven years from the date of loss, per the CFPB. After seven years the entry drops off. Before then, it is visible to any carrier who pulls the file.

How to Get Your CLUE Report

You have the right to one free copy every 12 months, and the CFPB confirms LexisNexis must deliver it within 15 days of your request.

Two ways to request:

Online at consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com
By phone at 866-897-8126

You will need your name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number to verify identity. The report arrives by mail or through a secure online portal depending on how you request it.

The 15-day delivery window is the single most important number in this article if you are about to list. More on that below.

How to Dispute an Error on Your CLUE Report

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to dispute information that is inaccurate or incomplete on your C.L.U.E. report and to have unverifiable data corrected or removed. The CFPB states this directly.

The dispute sequence:

Pull the report. You cannot dispute what you have not read. Request it and wait the 15 days.
Identify the specific error. A wrong date, a wrong loss amount, a claim you never filed, a claim attributed to your address that belonged to a prior owner or a different unit, a “loss” that was only an inquiry.
File the dispute with LexisNexis in writing. Include your report number, the specific claim entry, and documentation supporting your correction. Insurer letters, repair invoices, and prior correspondence all count.
LexisNexis must investigate. Under FCRA, they contact the reporting insurer, verify the data, and either correct, delete, or confirm the entry.
If they confirm and you still disagree, you have the right to add a 100-word consumer statement to your file that any future carrier pulling the report will see.

The dispute clock and the delivery clock are the reason to pull your file before you list, not after a buyer’s insurance quote comes back high.

If you are researching what a sale actually costs you all-in, including the surprise line items, What Does It Cost to Sell a House in 2026? All Fees, State by State breaks it down.

The Part Only We Write: What Your CLUE File Does to a Sale

Here is what most sellers never see coming.

The CFPB is explicit that C.L.U.E. Property is tied to the property address. The claim history from your ownership stays attached to the house when a buyer’s insurer pulls a quote to bind coverage before closing.

A financed buyer cannot close without a bound homeowners policy. Their lender requires it. Their insurer runs the address, pulls the C.L.U.E. Property file, and prices the policy based on your loss history. If your seven-year file shows two water claims and a fire claim, the buyer’s quote can come back at $4,800 a year on a house they budgeted at $1,600. That happens 15 days into a 30-day contract, when they have already paid for inspection and appraisal.

Three things can happen next:

The buyer accepts the higher premium and closes anyway (rare when the gap is thousands).
The buyer asks you for a price concession to offset the premium delta (typical).
The buyer walks. Their earnest money situation depends on the contract language, but the deal is dead either way.

You are now back on the market with a house that has “buyer walked” attached to its listing history, and the next buyer’s insurer will pull the same file and get the same quote.

This is the case for pulling your C.L.U.E. Property report before you list, not after a contract falls apart. Fifteen days to receive the report, plus dispute time if there is an error to fix, fits inside a pre-listing window. It does not fit inside a 30-day escrow.

When the File Is Accurate and Bad

If you pull the report and everything on it is correct, and the loss history is heavy enough that every carrier prices the house the same way, no dispute changes that outcome. The claims happened. The data is real. The premium is what it is.

At that point you have two directions.

Direction one: list anyway and price for it. You disclose the loss history, you accept that financed buyers will get high insurance quotes, and you price the house low enough that a buyer will absorb the premium or a cash buyer will find the discount attractive. This works when the local market has enough cash demand to compete for the listing.

Direction two: sell to a cash buyer who does not need a bound policy at closing. A cash buyer is not applying for a mortgage, so no lender is demanding proof of insurance to fund the loan. The buyer can insure the property after closing on their own timeline, and the C.L.U.E. file becomes their problem to manage from their ownership date forward, not a deal-killer at your closing table.

This is the honest case for a cash sale in this specific situation. Not every situation. When your loss history has already priced you out of the retail buyer pool, a cash buyer is the practical exit.

If you want to see how insurance pressure is hitting older homes specifically, Why Insurance Rates Are Spiking on Older Midwestern Homes has the numbers, and Your Insurer Dropped You. Can You Still Sell the House? walks through the sale path in full.

When a Cash Sale Is Not the Right Answer

A cash offer is not the right choice for every seller with claims on their file.

If your C.L.U.E. Property report shows one paid claim from four years ago, the carrier quoting a buyer will price it in, but the premium will not be catastrophic. A financed sale is fine, a retail listing captures full market value, and there is no reason to accept a cash discount to solve a problem you do not have.

If your loss history is heavy but you have time, patience, and the ability to carry the house for another 12 to 24 months, you can let the older claims age off the seven-year window and re-list once the file cleans up. That works if you can afford the monthly cost of holding and if your insurance is still active. It does not work if you have already been non-renewed and the FAIR plan is the only carrier left.

Cash makes sense when the loss history is bad enough to kill financed deals, when you have been non-renewed and cannot get another standard-market carrier to write you, or when you need out on a timeline shorter than 90 days. Outside those conditions, list retail.

What the 2026 Insurance Market Is Doing to This

Premium pressure has amplified the cost of a claim on your record.

The national average homeowners policy now runs about $2,490 a year, roughly $208 a month (NerdWallet), and carriers are dropping policies at a rate they never used to. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners found company-initiated non-renewal rates rose between 96% in the Southeast and 216% in the West from 2018 to 2024.

That is the starting point for a clean file. Add two water claims in the last five years and the carrier that would have quoted near the average quotes well above it, or declines to write the house at all. Your claims file did not change. The market’s tolerance for it did, and that is why a file that was survivable five years ago ends a renewal now.

Your Action Sequence

Request your C.L.U.E. Property report today. consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com or 866-897-8126. Free, 15-day delivery, one per 12 months.
Read every entry. Date, type, amount, status, address. Flag anything wrong or anything you do not recognize.
Dispute errors in writing with LexisNexis. Include documentation. FCRA gives you the right to correction or removal of unverifiable data.
If the file is accurate, decide whether to list retail with pricing that accepts the insurance drag, wait for older claims to age off, or sell cash.
If you want a written cash offer, we run the address, look at the property condition, and send a number in 24 hours with no financing contingency and no insurance-quote condition at closing. Get a free estimate or contact us directly.

If you own rental property and the claims file on the address is what pushed your carrier to drop you, our refer-and-earn program pays $500 for any referred seller who closes with us.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get my CLUE report?

Request it free from LexisNexis at consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com or by phone at 866-897-8126, and they must deliver it within 15 days per the CFPB. You are entitled to one free copy every 12 months, and you will need to verify identity with your name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number.

How long do claims stay on your CLUE report?

Claims stay on your C.L.U.E. report for seven years from the date of loss (CFPB). After seven years the entry drops off the file and is no longer visible to carriers pulling the address.

Does filing a home insurance claim raise rates?

Yes, a paid claim typically raises your premium at renewal, and the surcharge persists across several renewal cycles rather than a single one. There is no national rule for how long, because it is set by your carrier and your state’s rate filings, so ask your agent what your carrier applies. Frequency of claims matters more than dollar amount, so two small claims in three years often cost more in future premium than one larger claim.

Can a claim appear on my CLUE report even if I was not paid?

Yes, in some cases a reported loss can appear even when little or no payment was made, which is why insurance agents commonly advise against filing small claims. Pull your report and confirm exactly what is on it before assuming an unpaid inquiry did not create a data point.

What do I actually put in the dispute letter to LexisNexis?

Address your dispute letter to LexisNexis Consumer Center, reference your C.L.U.E. report number, identify the specific claim entry you are disputing by date and loss type, and state clearly why the entry is inaccurate or incomplete. Attach supporting documentation like insurer correspondence, repair invoices, or proof of address discrepancy, and cite your Fair Credit Reporting Act right to correction of unverifiable data.

Will my CLUE report affect a buyer’s ability to insure the house I am selling?

Yes, C.L.U.E. Property is tied to the property address, so a buyer’s insurer pulls the same claim history from your ownership when they quote a policy to bind at closing (CFPB). A heavy loss history can push the buyer’s insurance quote high enough to kill a financed purchase after you are already under contract.

What is the difference between CLUE Property and CLUE Auto?

C.L.U.E. Property tracks homeowners and personal property claims tied to a physical address, while C.L.U.E. Auto tracks vehicle insurance claims tied to you personally. Carriers pull the Property version when quoting a house and the Auto version when quoting a car, and the two files are separate products with separate reports.

Written by Addai Lewellen and Grant Umali, co-founders of Skip The Agent LLC. Addai is a lifelong Indiana resident with deep experience in the Indianapolis and Midwest real estate market. Grant brings a background in marketing, sales, and customer success. They handle every deal personally. Reach them directly at skiptheagent.llc.