Finding cheap home insurance quotes
The first step is getting a realistic set of quotes to value the work of rebuilding your home. Remember you are not insuring the resale value. It’s the cost of rebuilding from the ground up. Once you are confident on the amount of cover for the structure, then do a reasonably thorough walk-through your home and estimate how much it would cost to replace all your personal possessions and general contents. Remember that, unless you buy a special “new for old” policy, you are insuring the replacement value, i.e. “like for like”. So if you have three-year-old furniture, the value is secondhand replacements. Once you have these two figures, you can start doing searches on the internet. Using a site like this, it’s easy to get prices for basic cover with agreed values.
Online quotes give you a quick estimate of likely costs and, unlike going to an insurance company directly, buying through the internet is often cheaper. Note that, in some cases, this price competition has encouraged some insurers to operate direct-call services where you can get a quote by telephone. These can also be relatively cheap. The problem for you is to know when a premium rate is competitive. The only way to find out is to get as many quotes from as many insurers as possible. The only problem is one of time. Although it’s quick to use the comparison online search engines, telephoning all the companies will eat into your time.
One issue to consider is buying both your auto and home insurance from the same company. The majority of companies offer at least 10% for the bundle. But, no matter how good this may sound, you should always get quotes for the auto insurance from as many different insurers as possible. Just because one company offers you 10% for giving them more business does not mean you cannot save more by changing both your auto and home insurance to different companies.
Remember online and telephone quotes only give you the rates for basic policies. If you have anything non-standard, you must read through all the policies before deciding whether any will give you what you need. If in doubt, it’s better to get a specific quote based on something more than filling in a short questionnaire. When it comes to home insurance, buying based on price alone can be a false economy.