Four documents land in your inbox, and only one of them answers your question.

Four documents, four different jobs

These arrive interchangeably, often from someone who has never been told which one you need. They are not interchangeable. One is a contract, one is a report, one is the policy itself, and one is the wrong product entirely.

Read the form number off the document rather than from memory. It is printed in a corner of the page, and editions change. The number is the surest way to know what you are holding before you read a single field.

• Binder. A temporary contract of insurance, issued before the policy itself exists, with an expiration date on its face. This is real coverage, which is why it can support a funding, and it is also temporary, which is why it needs a follow-up. The common binder form is ACORD 75.
• Evidence of property insurance. A summary of an issued policy, prepared for a lender or other interested party. The residential form is commonly ACORD 27. ACORD 28 is its commercial-property counterpart. It is a report about a policy, not the policy.
• Declarations page. Pulled from the issued policy. Named insureds, property address, policy term, coverage parts and limits, deductibles, endorsements, and the mortgagee. This is the policy describing itself, which is why most lenders would rather have it than anything else on this list.
• Certificate of liability insurance, commonly ACORD 25. This is the wrong form on a residential file and it shows up constantly, usually because someone in the chain has a commercial-lines habit. It evidences liability coverage. It says nothing useful about the dwelling.

Why the evidence form tells you it confers no rights

Across the top of an ACORD evidence or certificate form sits a block of small print. It says the document is issued as a matter of information only, and that it confers no rights on the holder. It also says the document does not amend, extend, or alter the coverage described.

People skip it because it looks like boilerplate. It is not decoration. It is the form telling you what it is.

That sentence is the whole reason a careful file asks for the declarations page. An evidence form can be accurate the day it is issued and wrong two weeks later.

It also does not create any obligation running to you. The declarations page comes out of the policy, so if it is wrong, the policy is wrong. That is a problem you can actually get fixed.

The practical sequence on a purchase is usually all three in order. You start with a binder because the policy has not been issued yet.

You get an evidence form or a declarations page once it has. If your funding date lands inside the binder period, the binder is what you are relying on. In that case, the effective date and the expiration date on it both matter.

The six things you are actually verifying

Whatever arrives, the review is short. Most corrections trace back to one of six fields, and five of the six can be checked before you read anything about the property itself.

Two of these are worth slowing down on. The named insured has to line up with how title is being taken. That is where a trust, an LLC, or an added spouse quietly breaks an otherwise clean document. And the effective date has to be on or before the funding date, not the contract date and not the date the document was issued.

• An active policy, with a term that covers the funding date. On a binder, check the expiration as well as the effective date.
• The property address, matching the contract and the appraisal, including unit number and any directional the county uses.
• The effective date, on or before funding. A policy that defaults to the date it was written is the single most common date error.
• The settlement basis on the dwelling. Replacement cost, not actual cash value, subject to the roof carve-out discussed below.
• The coverage amount, tested against your investor's rule rather than against the purchase price or the loan amount, which are different numbers for a different purpose.
• The deductible, tested against your investor's cap, and read carefully when the policy carries separate wind, hail, or wildfire deductibles.

The numbers your guide sets, and the fact that they moved

For a conventional loan, the rule you enforce comes from Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-3-02. As the guide reads today, it sets no formula for the coverage amount. A policy written on a replacement cost basis, with roofs excepted, is deemed to provide sufficient coverage.

The lesser-of test many processors learned is no longer in the text. That test was one hundred percent of replacement cost value, or the unpaid principal balance with an eighty percent floor. The maximum deductible in the same section is five percent of the property insurance coverage amount. Where a policy carries separate deductibles for perils such as wildfire or windstorm, each of those must stay within five percent as well.

Settlement basis is where the ground has moved under this audience twice. Through early 2026, B7-3-02 required claims to settle on a replacement cost basis. It also said policies settling on an actual cash value basis were not acceptable.

On March 18, 2026, FHFA announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would accept actual cash value coverage on roofs. The rest of the dwelling stays on replacement cost. That change was implemented through a Fannie Mae lender letter and a Freddie Mac bulletin, and the guide text now carries the roof exception.

Here is the part worth knowing before you argue with anyone. A lender letter takes effect on its own terms and gets merged into the guide text later.

That means the published section and the letter can disagree for a while, as they did this spring. The rule you learned in 2024 has changed more than once since, and the guide page you would naturally check is not always the operative one that week. Confirm against your own investor's current guidance and your own company's overlay, and confirm it in writing.

Government and portfolio files run on different text again. FHA's Single Family Housing Policy Handbook does not publish an insurer rating table or a deductible cap the way the Fannie guide does. So on those files, the requirement you are enforcing usually comes from your investor or your own overlay rather than from the agency. Do not carry a conventional rule across to a government file by habit.

What to ask for in the first email

Almost every corrected document on a residential file could have been avoided by one message sent before anything was issued. The person placing the coverage cannot put your requirements on a document they were never given, and they will not guess correctly.

Send it once, in writing, to the borrower and to whoever is placing the coverage. Written is the whole trick: requirements read aloud over the phone are how the wrong version gets typed.

• The exact mortgagee clause, the exact insurance-department mailing address, and the loan number.
• The funding date, and a plain statement that the effective date must be on or before it.
• Your settlement-basis requirement as it stands today, including how you are treating roofs.
• Your coverage-amount rule and your deductible cap, stated as rules rather than as numbers you expect them to already know.
• How title is being taken, so the named insured is right the first time.
• Which document you will accept, and where to send it.