Buying House Insurance

Buying homeowners insurance is difficult if you don't plan. The last time we went shopping for homeowners insurance we had an idea of the coverage we needed and the cost of the contents in our house.

Getting an idea of our inventory was simple. All I did was a Google search for 'Home Inventory Lists' and a number of files came up with a specific forms we could use to list our stuff. This really helped in giving the various agents an idea of the stuff we owned.

We also got the exact square footage of our house and an idea of its current value. This made it easier to see who was being honest with us about rates. For example, a home that is worth 150 thousand dollar will not cost 200 thousand dollar to rebuild and the agent is padding the premium for extra commission. There isn't an insurance company in the world that would pay to rebuild a house more than its worth. We tried this out on a few agents and found a lot of them tried to pad the premium this way.

I also noticed that the deductible changed depending on the agent. So that the cost of the final premium would be cheaper, that's why it's smart to give them all a deductible of around $500.00. You should know that the higher the deductible the lower the yearly premium. We priced policies at a $1000.00 deductible and found that some premiums lowered as much as $100.00.

Our goal was to get a quote from all the major insurance agencies in our area before deciding on one. Each gave us a detailed quote that we could compare and we checked out references. We also made sure we got all the special discounts possible from each agent. Stuff like having fire extinguishers, fire alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, burglar alarms or even how close you live to a fire hydrant all help reduce the rates.

By using all these discounts and even getting offered 30% off on our car insurance we finally picked Allstate. They gave us the best homeowner's rate but they also offered to discount other insurance products for us like car and life insurance. We like Allstate they've been a good company, but every two years or so we still shop around for insurance just to make sure we're getting the best price possible.

Visit one of the Quote Boxes on this page for a quote on homeowner's or packaged Auto and Home insurance. Visit QuoteFinder.Org to Find Health Insurance.