Shopping for home insurance
October 18, 2017 5:35 PM   Subscribe

It's easy to compare the price of home insurance, but how do you compare the quality —and whether the quality difference is worth the price. I'm thinking of both tangible specifics like deductibles and exclusions, and also less easy-to-pin-down qualities like customer service and how well they treat you when you need to use the insurance. Are there good lists of questions to ask on the phone, or good comparisons of providers available?
posted by spbmp to Work & Money (9 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: This related question is also interesting for some thoughts about what and how much value to cover.
posted by spbmp at 5:57 PM on October 18, 2017


Word of mouth and the vague guessing of online reviews and ratings is all I found when doing this recently. That said, my single point anecdote is that my in-laws had a serious house fire and their insurance (Amica) was phenomenal. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone gush about their insurance before, but they did. They're selective (they wouldn't insure the house we were interested for instance), but for my in-laws, absolutely worth it.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:15 PM on October 18, 2017


I've had nothing but good experiences with State Farm both directly and indirectly, but that has never involved a widespread disaster scenario, which is where even otherwise good companies often fail the worst.

I've told much of the story of a friend's exceptional service after her house fire, which is what convinced us to go to the trouble of switching. We had replacement cost coverage, but never had to use it. That's where I'd expect the most argument from them in case of a run of the mill loss.

Sorry all I have is anecdotes. Insurance is such a local thing, given how much it varies between states, I don't think a really comprehensive site would even be possible without subscription support or referral kickbacks, and the latter would compromise any appearance of integrity.
posted by wierdo at 6:38 PM on October 18, 2017


Response by poster: Here's a consumer reports comparison I found, where the top rated (in terms of quality of experience in a claim) are Amica and USAA. The article also has a lot of useful thoughts on what to get and how to use it (maybe biased somewhat towards insuring more heavily, versus other places I've seen advice to underinsure and take on more risk with your savings.)

I'll definitely check out Amica, but still curious about organized ways to ask questions and compare apples to apples somehow.

One more interesting tidbit: We've gotten estimates from USAA and GEICO that radically differed in the questions they asked us to base the estimate, and in the value they would insure for the same house. (USAA insuring for more than the appraised value, so quite high, GEICO for about 2/3, which seems more like what I'd expect for cost-to-rebuild. Maybe it's complex b/c it's a rowhouse.)
posted by spbmp at 7:09 PM on October 18, 2017


my family (and my parents) have been amica customers for 30-40 years. i haven't had to make a home insurance claim but the two auto claims (in 86 and 03) were both handled extremely well.

underestimating the value is an easy way for them to be able to quote you lower premiums to 'make the sale'.
posted by noloveforned at 8:06 PM on October 18, 2017


nthing Amica. They really are a fantastic company and are very responsive when it comes to claims.
posted by ghostpony at 9:44 PM on October 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


We went through a broker (recommended by our mortgage insurance agent), and so he did all the comparing for us, which was awesome. If you can find a broker you trust (perhaps through getting a recommendation from someone else in real estate that you trust), that can be a nice way to do it and let them do all the legwork for you.
posted by rainbowbrite at 7:42 AM on October 19, 2017


I'm a little late to the show but will also nth Amica, recommended by a relative of mine who is an insurance adjustor.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2017


Response by poster: We got excited about Amica, but found it too expensive, even after the estimated payback, compared to USAA. Also, keeping GEICO for our cars turned out cheaper, whether we were with Amica or USAA, even after the 15% discount. It seems there are very few shortcuts, other than lots of calls back and forth to help compare, since there are lots of little differences among the products.
posted by spbmp at 5:04 PM on November 19, 2017


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