Insurers keep a secret history of your home

You probably know that it's not a good idea to make too many claims on your homeowners insurance policy, because your insurer could drop you.

What you might not know is that a claim could make selling your home more difficult down the road. What's more, you could find your home's value damaged or a sale jeopardized even if a previous owner, and not you, made a claim.

Insurers increasingly are using a huge industry database, called the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, or CLUE, to drop or deny coverage based on a home's history of claims or damage reports.

Insurance companies are terrified of rising losses from water and mold damage. So a single report of water-related problems may be enough for insurers to shun your home.

Jan and Kevin Garder of Bremerton, Wash., discovered this the hard way. The Garders thought they were doing the right thing when they told their insurance company, State Farm, about some minor water damage caused by a rainstorm last year.