What are the best homeowners insurance rates?

The key to buying insurance is tailoring the policy to your individual needs. Then, you get to work comparing quotes. This process ensures the best homeowners insurance rates while securing your assets and future.

Sounds simple, but it gets more complicated when you realize it is a bit more like dating. You are sizing up potential insurance companies through alluring quotes, while the carriers scour your personal financial history, past claims, and even credit score to determine if they want you as a customer. Even playing field it is not.

Be sure to compare rates instantly using the FREE quote tool above!

How to Even the Insurance Game

Pay attention to the following:

1. Pay your bills on time to keep your credit score high. That keeps your rates low.
2. Do not make unnecessary claims, because it will raise your rates.
3. Do not lie to insurance carriers because they are likely to prevent you from getting insurance in the future.
4. Do not make false insurance claims, because carriers will not cover you in the future.
5. Maintain your home so that insurance carriers will cover claims, otherwise carriers will deny claims.
6. Do get dog training for your dog to avoid expensive liability claims from dog bites.
7. Keep jewelry locked away in a safe bolted to the floor.

Learn the Terrain

The purpose of homeowners insurance is to keep you financially afloat if you suffer property damage or face injury liability claims in your home.

Basically, you need to have insurance coverage for everything from a couple broken windows to replacing your whole house and contents. In addition, liability covers against everything from a visitor tripping up the front steps to getting bitten by your dog.

Regionally, there are different natural disasters you might have to cover against. For instance, if you live in a cold and wet place where snow collects on rooftops followed up by five successive blizzards, snow is a hazard.

The key to buying for regions is making sure you buy coverage against such threats.

Ask your insurer about the following, depending on the region you live in:

1. Earthquake insurance
2. Coverage against tornadoes
3. Sinkholes
4. Hurricanes
5. Flooding

What may surprise you, particularly if you move to another region, is that not all insurance is part of homeowners policies.

Flood insurance is not included. Go to the government website to find out if you fall within a flood area that qualifies for coverage.

Various insurance facts and references:

1. Dog bites are the most common liability claim.
2. The most expensive homeowners insurance claims come from mother nature.
3. Mold is another big-ticket insurance claim. Insurers deny claims if the mold occurs from owner negligence, such as ignoring a leaking roof.
4. Some coverage is carried out through insurance riders to the traditional insurance policy.
5. Keep up with insurance regulation changes with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Tips for Determining Rates

The difficulties in keeping all of these details straight is when you have to narrow down options.

The couple living in New York suddenly have to have flood coverage through FEMA, be concerned about weight of snow, wind damage from hurricanes, and other troubles that have hit their landscape with a force in the past 20 years.

Making sure that the insurance will pay to replace the whole house from scratch is the biggest deal. The main way to determine how much it would cost to rebuild is to hire a contractor and an appraiser.

Together, such a team will decide how much your home costs to build in today’s dollars. This is all covered under Dwelling.

Insurance carriers offer inflation guard, which prevents you from having to go back in and increase coverage every year to account for inflation of building products and labor. Such coverage is worth it.

Parts of a Homeowners Insurance Policy

Below are the different parts of a homeowners insurance policy:

1. Additional Living Expenses
2. Dwelling
3. Other Structures
4. Personal Property
5. Loss of Use/Additional Living Expenses
6. Medical Payments to Others
7. Additional Coverage
8. Exclusions

Other Structures

In addition to your house, you might have a shed, separate garage, and even a barn on your property. All of those structures need to have insurance. Basically, you will factor in how much it costs to replace them.

Replacement cost is what you want on your personal belongings as well.

This means that the insurer will pay you the amount it costs to replace your items in today’s market. If you see actual value, then claims will pay for your belongings in used condition.

Tips on Insuring Personal Property

When you are buying insurance for your personal property, make sure you keep good records. Take an inventory, photos, keep receipts, and write a description of the items in your house. If you have to make a claim, it makes it easier.

First of all, the insurance company will have your records that prove that you actually bought and owned those items. If you do not do that, it makes the process take longer.

When to Make a Claim

Homeowners seem to have an all or nothing perspective on insurance.

You have many who want to call to tell the insurance carrier about everything that happens at their house. It might give your insurance company a compelling reason to increase your rates.

The fact that you call because a shutter fell off the home and cracked to the ground is not something they necessarily can help fix. They can, but have you met your deductible?

And, if you have not, would it be better to just hire a trusted contractor to fix it, without having to go through a claims process and pay a deductible?

Remember, whether your claim gets paid or is a bust, you are causing your insurer charges.

For instance, the cracked shutter causes a claims processor, adjuster, customer service people all a lot of extra work and the insurance company money to pay them.

If the shutter falls onto the neighbor whose foot is clenched in your dog’s mouth, then you have a claim. In the case of what actually happened, that is when full disclosure of every detail is necessary.

Put Your Money Where the Risk Is

When you are buying insurance, you are given many options from how much insurance to buy to what to buy. The challenge is that you have no idea if you will ever need to make a claim.

On top of that you have no clue what the claim would entail. Would it be a fire that destroys the whole building or a chandelier crashing down during a dinner party with international diplomats.

Review the claims information that the Insurance Information Institute provides. The Institute reports on the claims frequency, origin, dollar amount, by state too.

Read the Policy

Always read what you are buying, through to the exclusions section. You will be surprised what your policy will cover and what it might not cover. Look at this quick homeowners insurance guide for some more tips on buying coverage.

Decide the limits you need, make an inventory, compare prices among many different insurance companies. Make sure you evaluate the insurers on their:

1. Creditworthiness
2. Customer Satisfaction
3. Efficiency and Effectiveness of Claims Process

Always ask about discounts too. Many carriers will provide added savings if you buy your vehicle policies through the same carrier that proffers up your homeowners insurance. Most of all, review the details of your policies to make sure that they meet your individual needs.

Make sure to use the FREE comparison tool below!