Home insurance sticker shock

ArrowFlyer86

ArrowFlyer86

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The Little Arrow That Could
I've read about home insurance prices going up in the news but until recently I hadn't really seen it first hand. My part of Illinois has been spared from crazy increases.

Now this year I just got my renewal docs and my premium is increasing over 70%. So I got my original docs and it's up to just over 300% of what it was when I bought the house in 2021 with the estimated rebuild cost up 71% since I purchased. Yet the actual value of the home is up maybe 20% at most.

Compared to people in Florida or other disaster prone areas my absolute dollar price is still probably pretty cheap, but it's still a shocker in terms of the increases. I'm wondering what kind of % increases you all are seeing this year?
 
Shop around. Mine went up but not nearly that vad
 
Who you with?

We are State Farm and got a bump this year across the board on home/auto/cycle. Going to start shopping before premiums are due in August.
 
I switched insurers around the time you bought. Mine went up 70% to 2400 a year. Shopped around and got it for 1350 a few weeks ago. Same exact coverage.

Every few years you gotta shop around. They get comfortable you're auto renewing. Car insurance is the same. I cancelled years ago and the agent said "we would have really liked an opportunity to retain your business".

Lady, you had my business. You lost it by charging double what your competitors are.
 
I renew in August - but seems to be up 30% in the last 10 years; 1 claim.
 
Racerx said:
I switched insurers around the time you bought. Mine went up 70% to 2400 a year. Shopped around and got it for 1350 a few weeks ago. Same exact coverage.

Every few years you gotta shop around. They get comfortable you're auto renewing. Car insurance is the same. I cancelled years ago and the agent said "we would have really liked an opportunity to retain your business".

Lady, you had my business. You lost it by charging double what your competitors are.
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When a major hail storm went through my area several years ago, a lot of people got the run around or cancelled once the claim was processed. Buyer beware.
 
Another recommendation to shop around. Doing so got my cost reduced by about 25% and my coverage nearly doubled.
 
Our home in East Tennessee hasn't seen terrible insurance hikes. The Gatlinburg area however has been difficult. We've seen multiple insurance carriers withdraw from the market. Thankfully our local agency there is still able to find other carriers as alternatives. Pricing has increased since the Nov 2016 fire there to the tune of, in some quotes, 700%.

I have found it helpful, as others mention, to shop around. Also, read through your coverages page for covered items and associated premiums. In some cases I have found some covered items that could be eliminated at low perceived risk.
 
Good to know I should shop around!

I have NatGen Premier which is owned by one of the bigger ones. Allstate I think?

Sounds like I'm more of an outlier with this crazy increase.
 
Considering some of the large scale disasters in California and Florida, inflation, and artificial inflation due to demand, it appears they are spreading the cost to everyone.

Have a few friends that lost their homes in the Thomas Fire that have rebuilt that now have to go to the California FAIR Plan because they are in a "high risk area.." Another friend a few blocks away got caught in this too... and in order to get insured he has a punch list that is about $30K to be in compliance - including replacing the roof and tearing out trees...
 
I kind of... well, didn't move to a high fire risk or flood zone for a reason. And in the 30 years of home ownership, I do not regret never having secured home insurance. Why?

All of my neighbors have had their policies dropped (unrenewable, period) this year. It seems like most insurers will not insure buildings over 30 years old, especially residential. Our company building fits in to the age category and although a couple carriers are willing to insure it, the premiums are sky high. I don't really have much of a say in continuing insurance so needless to say we purchased an overpriced policy.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Good to know I should shop around!

I have NatGen Premier which is owned by one of the bigger ones. Allstate I think?

Sounds like I'm more of an outlier with this crazy increase.
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You're not an outlier. I just dropped NatGen as well because they quoted me an 83% increase, C TX market. I stopped looking at the total increase since I purchased in 2018, but it ain't pretty. I've had to "shop around" every.single.year. It's ridiculous, but it really jumped the shark post covid M2 printer go brrrrr.

Ended up acquiescing to a 37% jump, and they had to quote it under the wife's name for the cheapest (don't know why that would change, given we're married but whatever).

Car insurance is spendy, but even with two claims (not-at-fault, 2 totaled vehicles by the wife in 6 years), the % increases have been smaller than on the residential side. Unreal. Long story short, housing asset inflation chicanery is out of control and insurance is a part of it.

If I had an 7%+ mortgage, I'd flex and pay it off, go bare just to spite them. Alas, riding the wave of 2021 refi, I just roll my eyes and watch until my neighbors squeal en masse and the politicians get nervous.

Good news is 2024 is already spicy, and it's getting even more spicy. Three words: Corp Maturity Wall.
Let's gooooooo!
 
Last year The Hartford (AARP) raised our premiums by one-third on everything -- auto, home, umbrella -- despite no claims, no accidents, no tickets, no changes in vehicles or drivers, and not in a high-crime or natural-disaster-risk area. The company may be taking a bath in the stock market, their real estate investments or maybe just some new young buck executive wants to increase profit the old-fashioned way, but we didn't stick around long enough to find out.
 
hindsight2020 said:
You're not an outlier. I just dropped NatGen as well because they quoted me an 83% increase, C TX market. I stopped looking at the total increase since I purchased in 2018, but it ain't pretty. I've had to "shop around" every.single.year. It's ridiculous, but it really jumped the shark post covid M2 printer go brrrrr.

Ended up acquiescing to a 37% jump, and they had to quote it under the wife's name for the cheapest (don't know why that would change, given we're married but whatever).

Car insurance is spendy, but even with two claims (not-at-fault, 2 totaled vehicles by the wife in 6 years), the % increases have been smaller than on the residential side. Unreal. Long story short, housing asset inflation chicanery is out of control and insurance is a part of it.

If I had an 7%+ mortgage, I'd flex and pay it off, go bare just to spite them. Alas, riding the wave of 2021 refi, I just roll my eyes and watch until my neighbors squeal en masse and the politicians get nervous.

Good news is 2024 is already spicy, and it's getting even more spicy. Three words: Corp Maturity Wall.
Let's gooooooo!
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This weekend at our rough river fly in we talked about car insurance premiums a bit, I was floored by how much people with kids (16+) pay. I don't want to know what it costs when you have 2 accidents (totals) on record... Thankfully my car is dirt cheap and insurance is barely 1k$/yr since I put all my money into flying!

And yep on the M2 comment. There's still plenty of money sloshing around in the system and people seem willing to pay astronomical prices on everything. I would think enough people would balk at crazy insurance prices increases that it'd cause some downward price competition, but I guess not. Time to shop around.
 
Bought my house December 2022 and bundled homeowners with 2 cars. Very surprised my premiums didn’t increase.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
There's still plenty of money sloshing around in the system and people seem willing to pay astronomical prices on everything. I would think enough people would balk at crazy insurance prices increases that it'd cause some downward price competition, but I guess not. Time to shop around.
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Nah, thing is, insurance on housing is a non-discretionary expenditure, once you remove the bad faith veneer of govt CPI goalpost shifting, Fed perennially quarterly-downward-revising, cooked-book calculations. Realize most Americans are cash broke and 33% are housing cost burdened (euphemism for house POOR), and have to rely on financing to afford their lifetime of housing costs.

Insurance thence becomes de facto mandatory by the real owners of said property, so people pay it ahead of their actual discretionary expenditures. I don't have to expand upon why non-discretionary line items are a wholly improper metric for evaluating neither pricing power on the part of said financed millionaires, nor true price discovery for the market writ large.

To wit, rapacious insurers tick me off enough? I pay the thing off. Most Americans can't do that tho. They'd sell or foreclose and tuck tail back to corporate rental hell. Matter of fact they have started to do that in some climate change impacted locales, such as coastal Florida, especially in the reassessed/reserve under-funded condo market. Rats bailing out of sinking ships left and right. But it's an election year, we're not gonna get real on calling a spade a spade until after Jan 2025.
 
We’re with USAA, which seems to be one of the best for coverage and service at a competitive price and ours is going up about 50%, partly because of a recent claim but mostly because of increased home value plus increased claims overall. I spent an hour on the phone with an agent “negotiating” better-defined coverage and it came down a little but coverage actually improved (I added mold coverage, which I didn’t know I was missing) and I opted for lower deductibles.

Things to consider with any company: when house values go up, so does coverage for all the stuff inside, since it’s a percentage of the house value. For us, we don’t have a lot and the coverage was excessive, so we moved to a lower percentage. Similarly our coverage for “outside structures” (pool, gazebo, tool sheds, etc) is a percentage and, again, was high.

Take a look at those and your deductibles to see if you can bring things down some. But think carefully about raising deductibles: sometimes the amount saved isn’t worth the increased exposure.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
I've read about home insurance prices going up in the news but until recently I hadn't really seen it first hand. My part of Illinois has been spared from crazy increases.

Now this year I just got my renewal docs and my premium is increasing over 70%. So I got my original docs and it's up to just over 300% of what it was when I bought the house in 2021 with the estimated rebuild cost up 71% since I purchased. Yet the actual value of the home is up maybe 20% at most.

Compared to people in Florida or other disaster prone areas my absolute dollar price is still probably pretty cheap, but it's still a shocker in terms of the increases. I'm wondering what kind of % increases you all are seeing this year?
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I had to raise my deductible from 1000 to 7000 just keep it from going up only 25%
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Compared to people in Florida or other disaster prone areas my absolute dollar price is still probably pretty cheap, but it's still a shocker in terms of the increases.
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Just be thankful you can still shop around. Not only are coastal and other areas seeing higher rates, the insurance companies are leaving the state.
 
Insurance is a bit crazy, but I’d say try to never make a claim, it affects everything under your name. Let’s say you have a 10k claim, but you have a few rental houses. You’ll probably pay a couple thousand extra per year per house for several years. In the end it will cost you a ton more.

My auto insurance is about $900 a year, after I got a claim removed from my record. Had to call and get a letter. So also check your claims record.
 
Mine increased 50% this past round.

Still only .5% of my home value though. So in 200 years I'll have paid the current replacement value of my home.
Sounds less painful that way, but still hurts to pay the bill when it shows up.

I don't know what the insurance market establishes as a profitable percentage.
 
Clip4 said:
When a major hail storm went through my area several years ago, a lot of people got the run around or cancelled once the claim was processed. Buyer beware.
Click to expand...

This is alway my concern with shopping around, my family and I have been with the same 2 insurance agents (father and then the son) for probably 60 years. I tried shopping around one year and went with another company that had about a 20% lower rate, then 1/2 way through the year they came back and said oh we didn't know about this claim and raised the price back up to what I was paying with my original company. So I am back with the original company. Now when some one calls with a great deal on insurance I just tell them, that's nice, but how are you going to compete with a 60 year history of reasonably paying out claims. this includes a basement flood, House fire, Serious Motorcycle accident (Months in hospital, an maximum payout of the insurance). There is just no way any other company can guarantee they will perform as well as the company I have been using when a claim is made.

Brian
 
We just got our renewal on one place. It went from $2800 last year, to $3850 this year. Our taxes did similar last year. Lots of roofs being replaced around here. They are not needed. but when the inspector is the roofer, an inspection means a new roof is needed. Lots of insurance claims for everything. Natural disasters etc. Cost of rebuild as well. It sucks. We have done a bit better by shopping around. but i expect that's only temporary relief.
 
Ventucky Red said:
Considering some of the large scale disasters in California and Florida, inflation, and artificial inflation due to demand, it appears they are spreading the cost to everyone.

Have a few friends that lost their homes in the Thomas Fire that have rebuilt that now have to go to the California FAIR Plan because they are in a "high risk area.." Another friend a few blocks away got caught in this too... and in order to get insured he has a punch list that is about $30K to be in compliance - including replacing the roof and tearing out trees...
Click to expand...

When I asked our former insurance broker, this is what he told me. CA, FL and the gulf coast depended on risk being spread to the rest of the country. Starting in the 20 teens, some states with regulated insurance have started pushing back. And forcing the insurance rates to be tied to the costs in the state and maybe including damages within some distance in states immediately next door. This is apparently a large factor in why the rates in many southern states have been going up like crazy.

In MA, our rate this year went up 30%. (Geico services, I forget the underwriter).

Tim
 
Llewtrah381 said:
We’re with USAA, which seems to be one of the best for coverage and service at a competitive price and ours is going up about 50%, partly because of a recent claim but mostly because of increased home value plus increased claims overall. I spent an hour on the phone with an agent “negotiating” better-defined coverage and it came down a little but coverage actually improved (I added mold coverage, which I didn’t know I was missing) and I opted for lower deductibles.

Things to consider with any company: when house values go up, so does coverage for all the stuff inside, since it’s a percentage of the house value. For us, we don’t have a lot and the coverage was excessive, so we moved to a lower percentage. Similarly our coverage for “outside structures” (pool, gazebo, tool sheds, etc) is a percentage and, again, was high.

Take a look at those and your deductibles to see if you can bring things down some. But think carefully about raising deductibles: sometimes the amount saved isn’t worth the increased exposure.
Click to expand...
Also with USAA, and one thing that lowered mine was looking at the actual value. They automatically increase the value each year, but that can be more than the actual value. My house had ended up being insured for about 150% of the actual value.

For others, the cost of the insurance is only part of the equation. If you have have a claim, how it is handled is what is important.
 
Pinecone said:
Also with USAA, and one thing that lowered mine was looking at the actual value. They automatically increase the value each year, but that can be more than the actual value. My house had ended up being insured for about 150% of the actual value.

For others, the cost of the insurance is only part of the equation. If you have have a claim, how it is handled is what is important.
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You might want to compare the cost of new construction vs the value of your current house. I increased the value of my home a bit a few years ago because I questioned I could build a comparable home with the quality of materials as what I have.
 
Clip4 said:
You might want to compare the cost of new construction vs the value of your current house. I increased the value of my home a bit a few years ago because I questioned I could build a comparable home with the quality of materials as what I have.
Click to expand...

Also to cover the cost of the new code requirements...
 
A big problem here in Florida has been fraud, especially with roofing claims. After big storms, out-of-state gypsy roofing companies (unlicensed in the state and county) send salesmen door-to-door offering free inspections. They always find damage, and push the homeowner to sign a contract on the spot. The contract includes Assignment of Benefits, which is the insurance company paying the contractor directly. The roofers do a marginal job with bottom-shelf shingles, severely overbill, and sue when the insurance challenges their bill. The insurance companies then settle and pass the cost on to all of us who don’t particpate in such scams.

That changed with the state outlawing Assignment of Benefits last year, but the damage is done, and many insurers have left the state. I’m currently looking for homeowner’s, since we are/were with Farmer’s. Already switched out cars and motorcycle to Geico, and actually did save a load of money. Over a grand less for the same coverage.

(Funny story about the roofing scammers: They came ‘round here a couple years ago following a massive thunderstorm, which the news reported had dropped nickel-sized hail in our county. The salesman who knocked on our door said they had downloaded a forensic weather analysis from NOAA that showed damaging hail. Well, I was sitting on the patio watching the storm, and we had one to two millimeter hail for 20 seconds. The big stuff fell 10 miles away. “So you took a screenshot from the evening news when the weather chick was reading off the scores and that’s a forensic analysis, huh? GTFO of our neighborhood before the cops get here.”)
 
Yeah, prices are crazy and I [post redacted by management].






:crazy::crazy:
 
Clip4 said:
You might want to compare the cost of new construction vs the value of your current house. I increased the value of my home a bit a few years ago because I questioned I could build a comparable home with the quality of materials as what I have.
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I also did that. And insured for expected replacement cost.

But that was still a good bit less than what the automated system had increased the value to.
 
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