Is your wealth slowly dripping away?

As a spokesperson for the insurance industry, Loretta Worters often gives tips to homeowners on preventing water damage. Some of her knowledge comes from personal experience.

Worters says she had owned a home in Bellmore, New York, for only a month when she noticed the clothes washer in the basement was taking an awfully long time to fill.

“I went downstairs and I was up to my ankles in water,” says Worters, vice president of communications for the Insurance Information Institute.

Appliance and plumbing failures are a leading cause of household water damage, which is far more common than you may think. Homeowners are six times more likely to suffer property losses from water than from theft and seven times more likely than from fire, says Kelly Greene, a risk consulting manager from Chubb Personal Insurance who led a session on property damage at the Financial Planning Association NorCal conference in May. (“Water damage” is different from flooding, which is rising water that affects two or more properties.)

“When you ask people (if they’ve had water damage), if they haven’t, chances are they know someone who has — a friend or family member or neighbor,” Greene says.

Water damage accounts for $1 billion in insured losses annually for homeowners and renters, with claims averaging more than $10,000 each, Worter says.

But not all water losses are covered by insurance . While a sudden event, such as the hose that burst on Worter’s washing machine, would be covered, a slower leak typically wouldn’t be. A homeowner could end up paying thousands of dollars, or more, to fix the damage and remediate any mold.

“That’s a maintenance issue,” Worters says. Insurance doesn’t typically cover problems caused by issues a homeowner should have detected and fixed, such as termite damage or a leaky roof.

Yet while most homeowners have smoke detectors to alert them to fires, and many have alarm systems to help deter theft, relatively few take steps to prevent catastrophic water damage. Even in the multimillion-dollar homes Chubb covers, less than 2% have automated systems that can shut off the water if there’s a leak, Greene says.

That’s a problem for the insurer, since water damage makes up 45% of its total homeowners claims, and losses over $1 million have more than tripled since 2015, Greene says. Chubb now encourages policyholders to install water leak detection systems, which attach to water mains and can cost $500 to $3,000, Greene says.

But there are lower-cost and free ways homeowners can head off problems:

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