7 min read · Last updated September 21, 2026
- A Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report holds up to seven years of a property’s insurance claims history, tracked by LexisNexis, per the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and confirmed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
- You cannot pull a CLUE report on a house you don’t yet own. Only the current owner, an insurer, or a lender can request it. The workaround is asking the seller to request their own copy and hand it to you.
- A new owner’s insurer is allowed to use a prior owner’s claims history to price a policy, and there is no law barring it, as long as the insurer can show a link between that history and future risk.
- You’re entitled to one free copy of your own CLUE report every 12 months directly from LexisNexis, and you can add your own written explanation to any claim on it.
A property’s insurance claims history follows the house itself through a sale, not just the person selling it, and a buyer has no legal right to pull that history before closing. The report that carries it, called a CLUE report, is a real, checkable document. Most buyers just never learn it exists until an insurance quote already reflects it.
In this article
- What a CLUE report actually is
- The rule that catches most buyers off guard
- Why a quote can jump even though you did nothing wrong
- What to do with your own report
- Frequently asked questions
Two water-damage claims totaling several thousand dollars were filed on a house in the four years before Priya Nair closed on it. She found out when her first homeowners insurance quote came back 39% higher than the number her real estate agent had estimated during the walkthrough, and the underwriter’s file cited claims history Priya had never seen, on a house she’d owned for exactly eleven days.
What a CLUE report actually is, and why it belongs to the house
The Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, known as CLUE, is a claims history database run by LexisNexis that lets insurance companies check a property’s or a person’s insurance claims before pricing a policy, according to the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance’s own consumer FAQ on the system. A CLUE report on a home includes the property’s address, the date and type of each claim, and the amount paid, going back up to seven years, per the CFPB’s own consumer guidance on the system. Only insurance companies that subscribe to CLUE contribute data to it and can pull reports from it, so a claim filed with a company that doesn’t subscribe never shows up at all, a real gap the Wisconsin regulator confirms directly: “Some companies choose not to subscribe to C.L.U.E. Therefore, losses filed with nonparticipating companies will not appear on a C.L.U.E. report.”
The rule that catches most buyers off guard
Under the federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act, a CLUE report can be accessed only by the property’s owner, its insurer, or its lender, per Wisconsin’s insurance regulator. A prospective buyer is none of those things until closing day, so there is no direct path to request the report on a house you’re still under contract on. The workaround the same regulator names explicitly: “you can ask the current owner of the property to order a C.L.U.E. report” and pass it along. A seller who’s willing to do this early in the process, ideally alongside the inspection period, gives a buyer real visibility into what an insurer will eventually see. A seller who refuses, or who never thinks to offer it, leaves the buyer finding out the same way Priya did, from a quote that’s already priced in whatever the report showed.
| Who wants the report | Can they request it? | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| You, on your own current home | Yes. Free once every 12 months, directly from LexisNexis. | Confirms your own claims history before you shop for new coverage or a renewal. |
| A home you’re selling | Yes, as the current owner. You can request it and hand a copy to your buyer. | Gets ahead of a surprise before the buyer’s insurer ever prices the policy. |
| A home you want to buy, before closing | No. Only the owner, insurer, or lender can request it under the FACT Act. | You must ask the seller directly, since there’s no independent path around this rule. |
| A home you just bought | Yes, now that you’re the owner. Your own insurer can also pull it to price your policy. | The prior owner’s claims can still factor into your price, with no law barring the practice. |
Why a quote can jump even though you did nothing wrong
Here’s the part that catches new owners hardest: nothing in federal law stops an insurer from pricing your policy using the prior owner’s claims history on that specific house. Wisconsin’s regulator states it directly: a company “is not prohibited from using the information if it can demonstrate a correlation exists between the prior owner’s loss and the probability of a future loss to the home,” and there are no laws specifically governing how a prior owner’s history factors into your own eligibility for coverage. Two prior water claims on a house, even if you never had a pipe fail, can mean the underwriter treats that house as a higher risk for another water event, and prices accordingly. A home with a clean claims history and one with two paid water losses in the past four years can otherwise look identical on a walkthrough and price hundreds of dollars a year apart once the CLUE report enters the underwriting file.
If your own quote just came in high and you’re not sure whether the number reflects the home’s real risk or something in its claims history, start by checking whether your dwelling coverage limit actually matches what the home would cost to rebuild today, since an inflated quote and an inadequate limit are two different problems that both show up as “the number feels wrong.”
What to do with your own report once you have one
If you’re the one with a claim on your report that you believe is inaccurate, such as an invalid claim entry or a wrong payout amount, LexisNexis will investigate and respond within 30 days, and correct or note the file accordingly. Insurers themselves can’t add notes to your record, but you can: if a real event happened and you addressed the underlying risk, such as removing a dog after a bite claim, you’re allowed to attach your own written statement to the report going forward, and it stays attached for every future pull.
Frequently asked questions
What is a CLUE report? A CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) report is a database run by LexisNexis that tracks up to seven years of a property’s or person’s insurance claims history. Insurers use it to underwrite and price new policies, and only companies that subscribe to the exchange contribute and pull data from it.
Can I request a CLUE report on a house I’m about to buy? No. Under the federal FACT Act, only the current owner, the insurer, or the lender on a property can request its CLUE report. Your only path before closing is asking the seller to request their own copy and share it with you.
Can a new homeowner’s insurance quote really be based on the previous owner’s claims? Yes. Insurers aren’t prohibited from using a prior owner’s claims history to price a new policy on the same property, as long as they can show a connection between that history and future risk. There’s no federal or state law specifically barring this practice.
How do I get my own CLUE report? You’re entitled to one free copy every 12 months directly from LexisNexis, either online at their consumer portal or by phone. You can request reports on yourself and on properties you currently own.
What if there’s an error on my CLUE report? Contact LexisNexis directly to dispute it. They’ll investigate with the insurance company involved and respond within 30 days. You can also add a personal written statement to your report to explain any claim, and it will appear on all future pulls of that report.