Property Assessment: Home and Auto Insurance Cuts

Insurance companies have the ability to assess your risk before they offer an insurance rate. This gives them the flexibility to determine why you are high risk and therefore reasons to increase the cost of your insurance. However, what one company may deem as a high risk factor, another company may completely ignore it. This fact makes it clear that you should shop around to various insurance companies before you tie yourself into one. Having several assessments will allow you to compare prices and coverage plans easily. If you try to compare prices before an assessment you will most likely be mislead for the pricing of the insurance plan. Many companies will lure you into low rates but then assess you as a high risk company!

Common High Risk Factors

• Living too close to water
• Wood burning stoves
• Temperamental pets
• Weather history in your area
• High crime rate in your neighborhood
• Swimming pools
• Dangerous outside equipment (trampolines, waterslides, etc)
• Too many pets
• Too many claims from previous insurance

Don’t Give a Reason to Raise Your Rates

As you can easily see, there are many reasons why a company may raise your insurance rates or deny you completely. The best way to get a fair an accurate quote is to contact as many insurance companies as you can in your area to find the best offer. Even if you already have home insurance you may want to do further research in other companies rates. Many people end up saving hundreds of dollars through changing home insurance companies because they were poorly assessed. Since insurance is a competitive market, insurance companies are likely to lower insurance rates to help you switch over to them.

On the other hand staying with the same insurance company for a long time can help you with your insurance rates. With auto insurance especially, insurance companies offer a lot of benefits for having clean driving records, full replacement value for vehicles and more recently accident forgiveness. Accident forgiveness is for those customers who have a perfect record and get an accident. It allows them the ability to make mistakes without their insurance rate suffering. If you switch to a new insurance rate after an accident you risk having to pay a higher rate because of your driving record and unreliability.

Additional Resources:

• Long Term Insurance Information
• Risk Assessment Information