Saved a bundle on my insurance

Florida insurance sucks. No two ways about it really. Before moving down here a few years ago, we'd read many times that the cost of living is lower in Florida compared to the Pacific Northwest from whence we came. Not true. WAGES are less, but cost of living is more ...and increasing. When we first moved into our house, we paid $800 for a year of homeowner insurance. Just over two years later, we received a notice this past April that our rate was increasing (again) and we would now be paying $2,986 per year.

Fortunately, someone at work mentioned that State Farm was again writing policies in Florida. The restriction was that the home has to be newer (my guess is to have been built to the newer building codes), and that the home has to be at least 500 feet from water (I think that was the scoop ...in any case, we meet both of those requirements, whether they are real or not). So I looked online and sent an email to our local State Farm rep -- who, it turns out, lives in our neighborhood.

Bottom line: we will save $181 per MONTH on our homeowner and auto insurance by switching to State Farm. I signed the papers today, and have contacted our other insurance carriers and the mortgage company.

We'd been paying Universal Insurance Company of North America $2,986 for a year of homeowner insurance, and had been paying Progressive $3,324 per year to insure our cars (Shirley's, Ben's, and mine ...all are 10 years or more old, so none has collision coverage). With State Farm, for slightly better coverage, we will be paying $1,723 per year for homeowner coverage, and $2,413 per year for auto insurance. That's an annual savings of $2,174!!! $181 per month. Wow. I knew something was messed up when we'd gotten notice from Universal earlier in the year about a huge rate increase. We are outside of all evacuation zones. We have metal storm panels to cover all windows and doors. We have a fire hydrant one house over, monitored fire and burglar alarm, newer home, no dogs, etc., etc. We are a good risk. Yet a huge (I think it was 30%) increase, when the news was touting the law changes that should reduce premiums.

It pays to shop around.

Comments

[Michael]

Congratulations on saving that money on homeowners insurance! Yours is certainly a rare success story - homeowners insurance is still very hard to find and shop in Florida.

For Floridians that are tired of having to find out the names of companies writing new homeowner insurance policies in Florida at the water cooler at work, there is a new website going live in the next two weeks that will tell you exactly who is writing in your home county. It will also help you screen the companies for things like financial soundness, hurricane discounts, complaint and customer service history without having to go look at multiple websites.

Its taken almost six months to compile this data but it is accurate and ready to launch around July 23, 2007.

The name of the company is Home Insurance Buyers Guide and the website address is www.homeinsurancebuyers.org