Top Tips For Buying Home Owners Insurance

 

First things 1st. points to ponder that greatly effect insurance rates

• Do you live in a high-risk area? such as earthquake fault lines, tornado and hurricane belts, close to major waterways or other high claims areas, your rates will be higher.

• What's the age and condition of the structure? when was it built, what type and how old is the roof, plumbing and electrical? Have any claims been filed in the past several years?

• What’s the size of the house: are you buying more square footage than you need?

• What discounts are available to you? Buying several kinds of insurance, home, auto etc. from the same company. security and smoke alarm credits, loss-free credits for being claim-free for many years. No smoking households, good deadbolts, living close to a fire hydrant. type of siding and roofing and even your age if your over 50 can decrease rates.

• Increasing your deductible. A $500 deductible is common, insurers encourage higher deductibles by increasing the savings. You may see big breaks between $250, $500 and $1000 deductibles.

• Group discounts. Insurance might be available through an affinity group such as AARP.

• How much insurance do you need? make sure you are buying coverage for the structures only, not the land.

• How much liability coverage do you need? This protects the insured against claims arising from bodily injury and property damage to others. Policies commonly start at $300,000 in coverage for liability, with options to increase it to $500,000 or even up to $1,000,000 in coverage on most policies. Over that you need an umbrella policy or excess liability policy. Umbrella policies give you an additional $1,000,000 in liability coverage for a premium.

In the past, replacement coverage was called Guaranteed Replacement Cost. There is no such coverage anymore. Today it is Replacement Cost Coverage, which means each insurance company designates a percentage of additional coverage on top of the insured amount. This is designed to protect the homeowner who has suffered a loss from having to pay additional construction costs to rebuild. It can cost more to build because of inflation or simply because material prices have increased. For example, if the dwelling coverage is insured for $300,000, and the company has 125% replacement cost coverage, the homeowner would receive an additional $75,000.

 

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