What do I look for when buying homeowners insurance?
Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at
1:13 am
Jonesy asked:
I am closing on a home on 9.26 and was told to purchase homeowners insurance. It is my first home and I am not sure what I should be asking and/or looking for in a carrier. I live in Minneapolis, MN if that helps at all.
I am closing on a home on 9.26 and was told to purchase homeowners insurance. It is my first home and I am not sure what I should be asking and/or looking for in a carrier. I live in Minneapolis, MN if that helps at all.
Tagged with: Carrier • Homeowners Insurance • Minneapolis Mn
Filed under: Homeowners Insurance
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Do you have a real estate agent? They should be able to offer some suggestions for you. Maybe you mortgage lender could recommend an insurance company too.
You could contact the mainstream insurance companies like Geico or State Farm (do a web search for their websites), they offer homeowners insurance. You might even be able to get a quote by filling out your information online, if not, just get their phone number off the website and give them a call. If this is your first time, you might want to get a few different quotes. It’s similar to automobile insurance, you have a deductible and a coverage amount. They will give you a quote on standard policy amounts but you can change those amounts (higher or lower) if you want to. The amount to rebuild will be X amount of dollars, the amount to replace your contents….well you will need to estimate that. It’s not as confusing as you might think and most of the time, if you let them know it’s your first home purchase, they explain everything really well. Hope this helps…..
Ok here’s some good advice. Home owner’s insurance does not cover floods and you never know if or when you will encounter flooding. One thing to do about this is check the basement for a sump pump. If it has one, ask to add sump pump insurance with your policy. It does cost a small amount extra, but could be well worth it someday. This will cover damages if the power goes out and your sump pump quits running, causing the basement to flood. Another thing I did was combine my auto insurance with my home owners to receive a reduced rate. This saves quit a bit each year surprisingly. And lastly, do some homework. Have a few different carriers give you a quote (like State Farm and American Family) and have the agents sit down with you to go over everything in your policy. That way you can see for yourself which one sounds like a better deal for you by comparing them all. Don’t stress too much about it. It does require a little homework like I said, but well worth it. Good luck and congrats on your new home!