5 steps to cheaper home owners insurance.
Copyright 2005 Stacey Zimmerman
Knowledge is power.
When you are looking to make any major purchase or take out any
long term insurance the first thing you should do is arm
yourself with all the facts you need and this is by no means any
different with your home owners insurance. Work out the value of
your home and write up a list of the personal items in your
home. This list should include absolutely everything that you
would need to replace in the event of it being damaged beyond
repair, stolen or broken. This itinerary will not only prove
useful for calculating the level of cover you require but also
for making a claim should the need arise.
Calculating your cover.
Home owners insurance is a little different to other insurance.
Car insurance uses book value of your car, the insurance company
being safe in the knowledge that you will be able to replace
your car should the unthinkable happen. Going out and buying a
house is a little different to this. There isn't a set value on
a house and you can't just buy the house itself. In order to
come up with a value on your home you need to find out the
market value for similar houses in a similar area. In order to
reduce the cost of your monthly premium you should seriously
consider excluding a small amount of the money because while you
need to insure the building and outbuildings you don't to insure
the surrounding or housing land.
Shopping around.
This is the key aspect to gaining cheaper home owners insurance
and is a step that has been made much easier with the
introduction of the Internet. Comparison sites are regularly
available that will allow you to get quotes from a large number
of home owners insurance companies. This will give you a much
better picture of the type of price you should expect to be
paying and will let you decide which policy has the best cover
combined with the cheapest price.
Selecting your home owners insurance policy.
Once you've got your list of quotes in you should be able to
tell pretty quickly which of the offers appears the best. Check
it over to make sure it offers exactly what you are looking for
and if it does you are onto a winner. If there are a couple of
quotes around the same price look them all over to see if any
have outstanding extra services that may make you give them
slight preference over the others.
Renewal time.
You will need to renew your policy or change insurance provider
on an annual basis and when this time comes you should check
that the policy you are applying for still has everything you
need. By doing this you will be able to stay on top of the
prices you are paying and the coverage you are receiving.