How do I Decrease Property Insurance Premiums?

Consider all of the things that property insurance covers; storms and natural disasters, fire, lightening, earthquakes, explosions, impact damage, and malicious damage.  Taking steps to reduce the risk of each of these things happening to you can reduce your premium.

Changes to the Property

You may not have any control over natural disasters, but there are steps that can be taken to reduce the potential damages.

Trees & Surroundings

For example, consider the distance of trees from your property.  In the event of a bad storm, larger trees that are closer to your property will result in higher premiums.  While you can’t uproot trees, this is something to keep in mind when choosing a property.

Property Structure

The structural and material design of your property is also important.  For homeowners, there are many design choices for the roof you can make such as having a lighter color so that it ages more slowly under the sun and investing in an underlayment system to provide extra protection of the roof.  For commercial property owners, some roof designs are better than others and might require further research to be addressed accordingly.  Cave-ins due to snow building up is common in older roof designs.

Age Of Property

Although you have no control of the age of a property, if you take good care of it and refurbish the elements that need it, you can keep your premium down by maintaining its quality.

Safety

Other precautions you can take are more in regards to safety.  Installing a sprinkler system will reduce the chance of fire and an alarm system can help to prevent malicious damages.

Personal Decisions

Stop Smoking

Do you or anyone else on your property smoke?  Cigarettes are a leading cause of fires on a property.  If you can quit the habit, you can dramatically drop the premium as this significantly decreases the chance of a fire.

Deductibles

By choosing a higher deductible on your insurance, you can pay a significantly lower premium as a result.  You should look at the money that you have put away for a rainy day and ask yourself how much you’d be willing to lose when paying for repairs on your property after an incident.  Keep in mind that if you place the deductible too high, you may end up in a similar financial bind to paying too small of a deductible.

Shopping Around

Keep close track of when your policies will be up for renewal.  It’s best to get two quotes for insurance 2 months before expiration.  Always keep a copy of your “loss runs” for the last three years.  You will need them to get a new quote.  If you don’t have your loss runs documented, you can ask your insurance carrier for a copy of them as they are required by law to give them to you.