Two reports, not one
This is the part that surprises people, and the second report is the more useful of the two.
| Personal report | Property report | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Claims you have made, across any property you have insured | Claims made on a specific address, by anyone who owned it |
| Who can order it | You, about yourself | The current owner of that property |
| Why it matters | It follows you when you move | It stays with the house when you sell |
| The use almost nobody knows | — | Ask a seller for it before you buy. It shows what has gone wrong with that house — and whether it will be expensive to insure |
What is actually on it
Less than people fear in some respects, and more in others.
| On it | Not on it |
|---|---|
| Date of each loss | Your credit score |
| Type of loss — water, fire, theft, liability | Your credit score, and the underwriting decision any insurer made. (Inquiries are a different matter: under § 1681g(a)(3) the disclosure you receive lists who pulled your report in the past year.) |
| Amount paid, including zero-payout claims | Repairs you paid for yourself without claiming |
| The insurer involved | Non-renewals, as such — though the claims behind one will be there |
| Status — open, closed, denied | Anything older than seven years — § 1681c(a)(5) bars adverse items beyond that |
| The property address | — |
The entry that catches people out is the zero-payout claim. You reported a loss, thought better of it, and withdrew — or the insurer declined it. Nothing was paid, so it feels as though nothing happened. It is on the record, and the next insurer sees it.
Dropped, denied, or holding a notice you do not understand? Call us. We will read the letter with you, tell you which clock you are on and what your state requires your insurer to do — then put you in touch with a licensed agent who can quote you and write the policy.
Call (866) 754-7910Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm ET (6am to 2pm PT). We are not an insurance agency and we do not sell policies. Call and we will help you make sense of what you have been sent — then put you in touch with a licensed agent — the one person who can actually quote you and write a policy. We hold no insurance license, so we cannot quote you, recommend an insurer, or advise you on your own policy.Getting your copy
CLUE is a claims database. The consumer reporting agency is LexisNexis C.L.U.E. Inc., which the CFPB lists as affiliated with LexisNexis Risk Solutions — a distinction that matters for where a dispute is sent. It is a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. That status is what gives you rights over it.
You are entitled to one free copy every 12 months under 15 U.S.C. § 1681j(a)(1)(A). Request it directly from LexisNexis — there is no need to pay a third-party service for something you can get for nothing.
And you may be entitled to a second one. Under § 1681j(b), if you have received an adverse action notice you can request a further free disclosure within 60 days of it. For insurance, “adverse action” is defined broadly at § 1681a(k)(1)(B)(i) — it includes a denial or cancellation, an increase in any charge, and an unfavorable change in the terms or amount of coverage. So a declination or a surprise increase does not use up your annual copy. Advice to get your report before shopping rather than after a bad quote, which read as “you only get one, do not waste it”. That was wrong, and it discouraged people from exercising a right at exactly the moment it arises.
Getting it before you shop is still the better plan, because correcting an error first is far easier than explaining it afterwards. But if the bad quote has already arrived, the 60-day route is open.
Disputing an error
Errors are more common than people expect: a claim recorded against the wrong address, a payout figure that does not match what was actually paid, a claim from a previous owner attached to you, or an entry that should have aged off.
| Step | What happens | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Get your report | Request your free copy — one per 12 months | Varies |
| 2. Identify the error | Wrong amount, wrong date, wrong property, a claim that was never yours, or one past its retention period | — |
| 3. Dispute it in writing | Submit the dispute to the reporting agency with any supporting documents | — |
| 4. They investigate | The agency must investigate and, if the information is inaccurate or unverifiable, correct or delete it | 30 days under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(A) — extended to 45 under § 1681i(a)(1)(B) if you send supporting documents during that 30-day window, which is exactly what step 3 tells you to do |
| 5. Corrected report issued | You can ask for the corrected report to be sent to anyone who received the wrong one — but you have to name them, and under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(d) the window for an insurance purpose is the preceding six months | — |
The Fair Credit Reporting Act obliges the agency to investigate and to correct or delete information that is inaccurate or cannot be verified. This is one of the few genuinely hard, checkable federal rules in this whole area — most of what governs home insurance is state law or carrier guidance, but your rights over a consumer report are federal and they have deadlines.
Corrections to this page (1)
We publish these rather than editing quietly. Our corrections policy explains how we handle errors.
- — We told home buyers that asking a seller for the property's CLUE report “costs them nothing”. We could not confirm from a primary source that a free seller-facing report is still offered — the only current route we found was inside a paid third-party disclosure package. A takeaway and an FAQ further down the page already said so; the advice itself did not, which is the wrong way round.
How we researched this
CLUE record content and retention are described from general industry practice reviewed in August 2026. CLUE is operated by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
Dispute rights and the investigation timeline are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Retention periods reflect general practice; the reporting agency's own policy governs only below that ceiling: 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5) bars a consumer report from carrying an adverse item that antedates it by more than seven years, subject to the § 1681c(b) exceptions. Descriptions that say the agency's own retention policy governs without limit leave out that ceiling — and your rights over a consumer report are federal.
This page is reviewed on a fixed schedule. If you find an error, our corrections policy explains how we handle it.
Sources
Every passage this page puts in quotation marks, with the document it came from, the part of that document, and the date we read it. 6 quotations from 6 documents. Follow the links and check us. Statutes are amended and pages move; if one of these is wrong or dead, our corrections policy says how we handle it.
Cal. Ins. Code § 791.12(c) — https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-ins/division-1/part-2/chapter-1/article-6-6/section-791-12/
the inquiry did not result in the filing of a claim
Cal. Ins. Code § 791.12(c) — the closing condition on the bar. The subsection ALSO requires that the information came from an insurance-support organization. An earlier version of this page cited § 791.12 with no subsection and said it restricted inquiry-based underwriting 'outright' Retrieved 24 August 2026.
CFPB, list of consumer reporting companies, the LexisNexis C.L.U.E. entry — https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-reports-and-scores/consumer-reporting-companies/companies-list/comprehensive-loss-underwriting-exchange/
seven years of home insurance and personal property claims
CFPB, list of consumer reporting companies, the LexisNexis C.L.U.E. entry — the retention period. AN EARLIER VERSION OF THESE PAGES SAID 'five to seven years' in eight places, which invited a reader to think a six-year-old claim might already have aged off and to dispute it on that basis Retrieved 24 August 2026.
15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5), as printed on the House US Code site — https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section1681c
Any other adverse item of information, other than records of convictions of crimes which antedates the report by more than seven years
15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5), as printed on the House US Code site — the FCRA ceiling on adverse items. This is a legal cap, NOT the reporting agency's own policy, which an earlier methodology note on these pages said it was Retrieved 24 August 2026.
Washington State OIC, 'CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange)' — https://www.insurance.wa.gov/insurance-resources/auto-insurance/credit-and-insurance/clue-comprehensive-loss-underwriting-exchange
LexisNexis advises insurance companies to not report claims information when you contact them to simply ask a question about coverage or your deductible
Washington State OIC, 'CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange)' — 'What a CLUE report contains'. This is the WA OIC's page reporting what LexisNexis advises; it is NOT a LexisNexis document. The page sits under the OIC's auto-insurance section Retrieved 24 August 2026.
Texas S.B. 736 (2013), § 4, adding Tex. Ins. Code § 551.113(b-1). UNQUALIFIED — https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/83R/billtext/html/SB00736F.HTM
An insurer may not consider a customer inquiry as a basis for nonrenewal or cancellation of an insurance policy.
Texas S.B. 736 (2013), § 4, adding Tex. Ins. Code § 551.113(b-1). UNQUALIFIED — no 'solely'. This page cited S.B. 736 for the 'solely' limb and asserted the absence of exactly this sentence, which the same act added Retrieved 24 August 2026.
Md. Ins. § 27-501(i)(1), quoted from a secondary republisher pending a citation to Maryland's own published code — https://law.justia.com/codes/maryland/insurance/title-27/subtitle-5/section-27-501/
unless there were three or more weather-related claims within the preceding 3-year period
Md. Ins. § 27-501(i)(1), quoted from a secondary republisher pending a citation to Maryland's own published code — flagged rather than hidden. It refutes this page's former claim that no statute sets a look-back binding on insurers Retrieved 25 August 2026.
What we could not find
This page makes 1 claim that something does not exist. That is the one kind of claim you cannot check by following a link, because there is no document to link to — so here is the search behind each one, and what we opened. Not finding something is not a finding. If you know of a source we missed, our corrections policy says how to tell us.
“we could not confirm from a primary source that a free seller-facing property report is still offered”
Where we looked 25 August 2026.
- CURRENTLY OFFERED: searched the LexisNexis consumer portal and its C.L.U.E. product pages for a seller-facing property report offered free to a homeowner, as distinct from the free annual personal report the FCRA requires
- HISTORICALLY OFFERED, THEN WITHDRAWN: searched separately for the 'C.L.U.E. Home Seller's Disclosure Report' by name, because the product is widely described in older consumer writing and the question is whether it still exists rather than whether it ever did
What we actually opened
- risk.lexisnexis.com C.L.U.E. Property product page
- The LexisNexis consumer disclosure request route
- CFPB list of consumer reporting companies, C.L.U.E. entry — lists the personal report, says nothing about a seller-facing property report
Frequently asked questions
Is a CLUE report free?
Yes. It is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and you are entitled to one free copy in any 12-month period under 15 U.S.C. § 1681j(a)(1)(A) — and, under § 1681j(b), to a further free copy within 60 days of an adverse action notice, which for insurance includes a declination, a cancellation or an increase in what you are charged. You do not need to pay a third-party service to get something you can request yourself.
How far back does a CLUE report go?
Seven years, which is both the CFPB's description of CLUE and the FCRA ceiling on adverse items. Most carriers look back three to five years when quoting.
Do claims I withdrew show up?
Usually yes, as a zero-payout claim. Withdrawing a claim removes the payment, not the record of the claim.
Can I get the CLUE report for a house I am buying?
Not directly. The consumer disclosure is the current owner’s to request, so the route is to ask the seller — and if they will produce it, the loss history on a property is one of the most useful things you can see before committing. One honest caveat, because an audit caught us asserting more than we could show. We could not confirm from LexisNexis’s own consumer portal or from the CFPB that a free seller-facing “C.L.U.E. Home Seller’s Disclosure Report” is still offered; the only current route we could find was inside a paid third-party disclosure package. Ask, but do not assume it is free or that the seller can obtain it easily. What is certain is the owner’s own right to a consumer disclosure under 15 U.S.C. § 1681j.
How do I fix a mistake on my CLUE report?
Notify the reporting agency — the FCRA does not require writing, but do it in writing anyway so you have a record — including any documents that support your position. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act they must generally conduct a reasonable reinvestigation within 30 days — extendable to 45 if you send documents during that window — and correct or delete anything found inaccurate or unverifiable.