So we gets a letter. Homeowners Ins applied for a 25% rate increase. W.T.F.?
This is happening across the board. Car insurance too. Rationale is greater losses through weather extremes, a la global warming.
Brother-in-law in CA, house insurance doubled this year. As it happens, his house is pretty safe from fire/flood due to construction and specific location, but not far enough away for the insurance company? Certainly bad stuff has happened in his county, but it's a big and varied county. We'll see if he can appeal.
mjc said:
Brother-in-law in CA, house insurance doubled this year. As it happens, his house is pretty safe from fire/flood due to construction and specific location, but not far enough away for the insurance company? Certainly bad stuff has happened in his county, but it's a big and varied county. We'll see if he can appeal.
appeal what? It's a private company. He can look for different insurance, of course, but it's all going up. If a national company has big losses in Florida everyone is going to pay.
I had a garage roof damage from a branch - premium went up to $3,887/yr with Naragansett Bay.
Just worked with Goosehead insurance in town and they found a policy with Progressive for $1,371.
My Goosehead agent told me the same thing. Rates going up all over, in large part due to Climate Change.
jamie said:
premium went up to $3,887/yr with Naragansett Bay.
10 days before Sandy hit NJ, and with my non-NB homeowners policy due to renew, NB (thru Geico) offered me a new policy for 60% less than what I was (then) currently paying. With policy limits and terms at least as favorable as the policy I had at the time - with 1 exception (which was revealed by the phone agent only at the very end of her synopsis). A $20K hurricane deductible.
The National Hurricane Center was predicting a track that day which suggested (if extrapolated by a novice like me) that the storm might visit NJ. I knew this before the call.
I declined the policy, and explained why (without mentioning what I knew about the storm). As I was about to disconnect, she said NB had a “provision” allowing the hurricane deductible to be reduced to the same amount as applied to “all other perils” - BUT an additional premium would be required.
The additional premium: $9 a year.
They must not have known.
I still have NB. But their premium increases have accelerated the last 3 or so years, and I think NJDOI’s approval of NB’s long-requested very large premium increase occurred after my latest premium was set. That’s bad news for the future.
Jaime: how does the proposed Progressive policy compare (policy limits and other terms) with your NB policy?
dickf3 said:
10 days before Sandy hit NJ, and with my non-NB homeowners policy due to renew, NB (thru Geico) offered me a new policy for 60% less than what I was (then) currently paying. With policy limits and terms at least as favorable as the policy I had at the time - with 1 exception (which was revealed by the phone agent only at the very end of her synopsis). A $20K hurricane deductible.
The National Hurricane Center was predicting a track that day which suggested (if extrapolated by a novice like me) that the storm might visit NJ. I knew this before the call.
I declined the policy, and explained why (without mentioning what I knew about the storm). As I was about to disconnect, she said NB had a “provision” allowing the hurricane deductible to be reduced to the same amount as applied to “all other perils” - BUT an additional premium would be required.
The additional premium: $9 a year.
They must not have known.I still have NB. But their premium increases have accelerated the last 3 or so years, and I think NJDOI’s approval of NB’s long-requested very large premium increase occurred after my latest premium was set. That’s bad news for the future.
Jaime: how does the proposed Progressive policy compare (policy limits and other terms) with your NB policy?
I think it's as good or better.
Climate change my A**. That’s just a convenient excuse. The insurance industry has watched while so many other industries raised prices due to inflation.
sac said:
My Goosehead agent told me the same thing. Rates going up all over, in large part due to Climate Change.
I think climate change is a convenient excuse to raise premiums.
I think increase in construction costs is at least part of the reason why premiums are increasing.
Losses are going up due to climate change - more fires, more floods, worse hurricanes. And construction costs matter too. Some combination of higher rates, more excluded conditions, and refusal to insure more properties is simply going to happen in response to this. I also expect pressure to make tax dollars pay for more of the reconstruction so that people can keep rebuilding in increasingly dangerous places in defiance of sound underwriting.
Auto insurance went up also, I use Progressive. Once the prices of houses and autos doubled in prices you better believe insurance rates would’ve gone up. Everything is more expensive today than it was five years ago. I blame Covid, not global warming. This is not Florida.
This is not Florida, and yet my kid's car was totalled in a flood near Philadelphia a couple of years ago. Looking back a while, there was Sandy. Does seem like more and bigger events. And that's not to mention places that are subject to fire.
imo, susan1014 makes an excellent point regarding funding reconstruction on flood plains, shorelines, forest/prairie borders....
This isn't Florida.