That is exactly the point of insurance. You’re betting something bad is going to happen and the insurance company is betting it won’t. In the homeowner example, even if you’re paying $2000/year for coverage you’re not coming out behind if your house burns down and you’re out $700,000 if you didn’t have insurance. In essence, you win at insurance by losing something else but you’re still solvent.
4 Likes
Climbing about 20,000 feet to get a better perspective, I wonder how much the rising premiums for the property in southern Idaho are due to anticipated greater claims amounts from climate change.
An anecdote from the sunshine state: My aunt and uncle have what I’m sure is a beautiful and palatial house in a suburb of Orlando. (My uncle started and owned multiple businesses.)
My aunt conveys that elevated risks of damage from hurricanes has resulted in them now having a policy with a $250,000 deductible. Reports are that more than a couple of insurance companies have pulled out of the sunshine state altogether.
I’m one of the first to lovingly mock our neighbors to the north - Ligertown, cough - but I’d take the property in southern Idaho over property in Florida, 100 times out of 100.
5 Likes
Having spent a lot of time in both places, I’m very happy with southern Idaho. (The 12 years of so that I was a software executive in Florida, I was commuting there from Utah, and had only to jump on a airplane to quickly escape as a Hurricane was approaching.)
I’d also be happy with some portions of eastern Nevada 
, western Wyoming, most of Montana, rural/mountainous areas of Colorado, or really a fair portion of the country.
Anywhere that has too many days with high temps above 90, or the temp/humidity equivalent, will not likely never be for me (I.e. Phoenix).
3 Likes
I have employees who live in Florida and the home insurance market is bananas. It may come soon that they only place people could get any home owners insurance is to buy it from the state.
2 Likes
Thankfully, they will have the steady hand of DeSantis taking the lead in such an endeavor.
What could possibly go wrong? 
5 Likes
I can see it now. If you’re eligible to vote, you’re eligible to get state sponsored insurance (now that they’ve purged the voter roles)
3 Likes
Complete aside: Back when some of the exotic cats escaped from Ligertown my aunt, who lived in Poughkeepsie, NY, called my mother to tell her the Vassar College student radio station was reporting on it. Since obviously anything out west likely has names with Spanish roots, the young lady reported that, “Authorities in the region are still trying to locate a “hag-war” in the hills near “Pocateyo.”
That still makes me chuckle.
6 Likes
Just got my renewal for 2025. Up a little more than 33% with no claims since I switched to Nationwide 4 years ago. Lovely.
Wankers. This is the kind of BS that leads to farmers cooperatives. We should all go with higher deductibles and form a Ute fans cooperative, pool some money into a liquid investment for the deductibles. I trust you guys more than I trust them!
5 Likes
My homeowners went up a little bit when I renewed it last summer, but it was nominal. The truth is I transitioned from Farmers to the AARP Hartford policies for both home and auto and saved several thousand dollars on my insurance for the year.
3 Likes
My wife keeps telling me we don’t need AARP but this sounds like something to look into.
1 Like
I got curious reading this thread so I looked at mine through Amica. We’re in Seattle so low on the natural disaster scale and have never had a claim but ours went up 25% this year. We may have to start shopping around and maybe think of bundling with our auto insurance.
1 Like
When we did the major insurance change in September that I posted about earlier, we ended up home, one rental, and auto insurance all through one company, Auto-Owners. Never heard of Auto-Owners? Neither had we, but some research shows they’re highly rated, they just don’t spend a boat load of money on national TV ads. I’m really sold on working with an independent agent at this point. Saving $6000/year will do that. I mean, how many times do you get the escrow change notice from your mortgage company to see that you’re payments will go down by almost $400?
We’re currently really testing Auto-Owners on our home. We had a shower pan leak that manifested itself the end of October so had to file a claim only 9 weeks after signing up with them. (I suspect that leak was there when we bought the house in 2022 based on the amount of wood rot, but it didn’t turn up in the inspection.) So far they’ve been OK. We’re moving into the final throws of getting the bathroom re-built and the settlement so we’ll see if things work out the rest of the way.
2 Likes
This thread got me thinking about self-insurance. I currently can’t do it because of mortgages, but if I was mortgage free, I would have to seriously look into it.
Here is an article I found as part of my reading that I thought was cogent.
I don’t know how it’s remotely feasible to self-insure for something like a fire. Even our little bathroom issue now is going to be over $25k. No way could I cover a few hundred thousand dollars.
2 Likes
I tried the AARP Harford, but got a “won’t insure” response because i’m in a high fire-risk area. Didn’t know Fruit Heights (on the bench) in Utah is in a high risk area. Interesting.
It depends…that area has grown so much in the last 20 years, and with all the water infrastructure that had to be installed to service the area, the question arises of when was the last time there was a fire flow system evaluation performed. The city should know this information and the rating that was given for your neighborhood. I forget the name of the organization that does the evaluations, but that rating affects your homeowners rates more than anything else.
I know after the last evaluation of my city, my insurance premium dropped a couple of hundred dollars for the year. Yes, it went back up and past the old high with the valuation o rama we have seen over the past 10 years, but it’s worth looking into.
2 Likes
fwiw…after 30 years with Allstate, I just went to State Farm and saved a bundle – for both homeowners and auto.
5 Likes
The Washington Post today has an interesting post and map regarding home insurance rates.
=======================
…There’s no easy fix. A combination of broad economic trends — labor shortages, inflation, higher reinsurance and rebuilding costs — and more costly and uncertain extreme weather events are driving up premiums.
Homeowners face an unsettling reality: Insurers are passing these costs to consumers with higher rates and more restricted coverage. In some states, insurers have stopped issuing new policies altogether. Ordinary Americans must now make hard calculations: Can they afford to stay, or is there a way to navigate this new insurance market?
Historically, insurance was a win-win for everyone. Homeowners paid a small premium to receive a payout after a natural disaster or other loss. Insurers turned a profit by spreading the risk among homeowners across the country.
But costs from extreme weather events have been rising, in part because Americans have continued to move into areas that are more vulnerable to severe storms.
1 Like
One more piece from the WaPo article…
=======================
Underwriting losses among U.S. property insurers totaled $47 billion in 2022 and 2023 alone, according to AM Best, a global credit rating agency.
Property insurance premiums have risen by more than 30 percent since 2020, the last full year the industry posted an underwriting profit. And insurers are still fleeing markets — seven out of California’s top 12 carriers have curtailed coverage over the last two years — or going bankrupt. Public plans, once a last resort, are the largest (and sometimes only) affordable option in “insurance deserts,” where private insurers no longer offer new standard policies.
AND
About 10 percent of U.S. homeowners are now forgoing insurance, double the recent rate. Or in some cases, they’re selling their homes citing insurance premiums that rival mortgage payments.
Sean Kevelighan, chief executive of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, expects we’ll pay even more as people move to riskier places. Losses are often subsidized by policyholders everywhere, even if residents of riskier Zip codes generally pay the most. Personal insurance is underpriced “almost across the board,” Kevelighan said. “As long as we see people living in ways that are riskier, the price of insurance is going to reflect that.”
AND
Request a (free) insurance bill of health for your property
Consider requesting a Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report. It’s the insurance equivalent of a credit score. It includes all the claims filed on a home or vehicle for the last seven years. If you have high premiums, check your own property’s bill of health (and fix any errors). If you want to buy a home, request it from the seller. You’ll quickly find out the property’s true claims history. You can request one free personal report online or over the phone each year from Lexis Nexis.
Customize your coverage — and beware of carve-outs
Insurers once worried most about “primary” perils such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Yet “secondary perils” such as hailstorms, tornadoes, thunderstorms and wildfires are racking up bigger costs. In 2020, these secondary threats caused more than 70 percent of insured losses from natural catastrophes, reports Swiss Re, a reinsurer.
Insurers have started carving these perils out of policies or imposing damage caps, meaning you’ll have to shop a la carte. “You used to be able to get one policy to cover all the perils and now it takes two policies to cover the same thing,” said Joyce Feldman, who owns Twin Valley Insurance Services in the fire-prone foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada range. “And people’s premiums are probably triple what they used to be.”
1 Like