David Bruce

February 16th, 2009

5 Ways To Control Your Homeowners Insurance Costs

Some great tips from the Richmond Farmers Insurance Team to control your Homeowners Insurance Costs. In our tougheconomic environment this is good advice.  Sometimes we over-look evaluating things like this which can save us hundreds of dollars.  It all adds up!

1. Shop around. Remember, cheaper insurance rarely means better insurance. Ask your friends, realtor, or mortgage broker who they recommend. Seek out a trusted professional to explain vital coverage differences.   You can also check the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (www.naic.org). They will have information to help you choose a reputable insurer in your state.
2. Raise your deductible. Deductibles are the amount of money you have to pay toward a loss before your insurance company starts to pay a claim. The higher your deductible is the lower your premiums are. A typical Home Owner deductible is $500. If you can afford to raise it to $1,000 you can save as much as 25% in your premiums.
3. Buy your home, auto and life insurance from the same insurer. You can save up to 40% by bundling your insurance while developing a relationship with that one carrier.
4. Improve your home security. You can usually get discounts of 5% for installing fire/burglar alarms. Not every system will qualify for a discount so check with your insurer first.
5. Maintain a good credit rating. Insurers are increasingly using credit information to rate home owners. To protect your credit rating pay your bills on time, don’t obtain unnecessary credit and keep your balances to a minimum. You should check your credit on a regular basis and have any discrepancies corrected as soon as possible.  Consider purchasing an identity monitoring program that some insurers offer as a special endorsement to help maintain your credit rating.

Some other help tips are to seek out other discounts (affinity or electronic pay discounts). You should inquire about additional coverage as needed (umbrella policies, Identity protection and a personal articles floater). You should plan on meeting with your agent at least once a year to review your policies.

Thanks to Anthony DiBuccio at Farmers Insurance Group/Richmond (phone-804-814-2212 email- adibuccio@farmersagent.com) for this information!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Mortgage Info, Real Estate News and Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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