Homeowner's Insurance

[flatgrinder]

Is there a general formula a person can use to calculate homeowner's insurance?

I know a lot of variables apply, but can you simply say something like 0.05% of the purchase price to get a ballpark figure?

I'm thinking about buying a house and need to figure out the costs involved.

Thanks! :thumbup:

 

[Dog of War]

HO insurance premiums vary quite a bit depending on state/town ... also type of construction, distance from fire hydrant, etc. If you have an idea where you'd like to buy and approximate house square footage and price, I imagine most insurance agents serving the area could give you a good ballpark figure.

Friendly insurance tip: if there's an ANPAC insurance agent in the area, and you have a clean driving record and no HO claims in the past three years, they are a great company, and will actually begin refunding 25% of your insurance premiums after three years if you have both a home/renters policy and full coverage auto through them. And their rates are great anyway, only company I've ever been with that my auto premium has gone down as the car depreciates.

http://www.anpac.com/

Damn I wish I didn't know so much about stuff like this. Seems life gets more complicated at every turn.

 

[Gollnick]

Is there a general formula a person can use to calculate homeowner's insurance?

I know a lot of variables apply, but can you simply say something like 0.05% of the purchase price to get a ballpark figure?

I'm thinking about buying a house and need to figure out the costs involved.

Thanks! :thumbup:

Call any insurance agent in your area, give them the address of the house you're thinking about, answer a few questions, and, within an hour or so they'll be back to you with a firm quote. Getting a quote doesn't obligate you to buy insurance from them.

And do get a lot of quotes. I recently redid all of my auto and home insurance motivated by Allstate dropping earthquake coverage from homeowners insurnace in Oregon. I sent a written request for quotes to twenty-some agents and got over a dozen quotes back. They varied three-to-one for the exact same coverage quoted from my written request.

 

[Gollnick]

I'm thinking about buying a house and need to figure out the costs involved.

Yes, you do. And don't forget to estimate major maintence that will be required in coming years. For example: how old is the water heater? They tend to go for about ten years depending on how good it was in the first place. And that's a four to six hundred dollar expense. Exterior painting can run five or eight thousand dollars. Carpeting can run into the thousands easily.

 

[mycroftt]

Consider combining your auto and homeowner's policies with the same carrier. My wife and I were able to save a couple of hundred a year by doing that. The discount was actually on the auto insurance but as long as there's an overall reduction it's a win.

 

[oldrifleman]

Consider combining your auto and homeowner's policies with the same carrier. My wife and I were able to save a couple of hundred a year by doing that. The discount was actually on the auto insurance but as long as there's an overall reduction it's a win.

We actually have all of our insurance with the same carrier and were able to save some money on discounts as well as using a seperate Umbrella policy for our excess liability coverage rather than paying seperatly on each policy. Steven

 

[MikeH]

Several years ago I combined my homeowner's, auto, and boat coverage, added a million dollar umbrella I previously didn't have, and quadrupled my uninsured motorist and medical coverage on the cars. My total annual insurance cost went down!

Definitely shop around.

 

[Bufford]

The cost of home insurance is also calculated where you home is located. I live in a rural area with only vollunteer fire service and at the fringe of the area serviced. Because of that and other variables such as wood heat my home insurance is nearly 4 times as high as a home inside a town or city. I did alot of shopping around, and my rates are about as low as I can get.

Insurance is an unregulated industry around here, and it translates into a huge rip-off, but going without it is a huge gamble I would not want to take.