understanding your insurance policy

Want To Keep Your Home Insurance Rates Low? Try These Techniques

24 September 2015 by Tuĝba Van Den Heijkant

If you're like most homeowners, you want to make sure that your property and everything within it is safe from dangers such as fire, floods, hurricanes, theft, and damage due to other natural disasters. But after adding all of your belongings to your policy, the rates can start to really add up. Luckily, you can implement a few techniques that will help you to keep your home insurance rates low without having to worry about expensive item replacements if something goes wrong. Here's how:

Invest in Security

Past statistics indicate that the majority of claims made on home insurance policies throughout the United States is due to property damage, and theft is another concern. So by implementing security measures into your home and property, you may be able to get a discount on your overall home insurance rates because you will be less likely to have to file a claim for damage or loss of belongings due to theft. Of course, a surveillance system won't avoid damage due to natural weather occurrences, but it can help put the pieces of the puzzle together when determining exactly how and when your property was damaged.

Installing a video security system that is tied into a live emergency response team and posting signs that warn of your surveillance system should be enough to prove that you've taken steps to personally protect your home. You may need to provide proof of having emergency response service to qualify for a discount, so be prepared to submit copies of your contract and a bill.

Insure Important Things Separately

It's a good idea to look into insuring the more important things in your home, such as wide screen televisions and expensive computers, separately so that you don't have to include them in your homeowner's insurance policy. This will not only score you a lower insurance quote, but it may result in better coverage for the things that would be the most expensive to replace in case of damage, theft, or a natural disaster.

The products themselves may qualify for an extended warranty through the manufacturer, but if not, you should be able to find aftermarket policies designed to protect specific types of items within the home. Spend some time reading the fine lines of any policies you consider investing in to ensure that they cover everything regular homeowner's insurance will cover – if a specific type of coverage is missing (for example, fire protection), you may find that it's less expensive to go ahead and opt for full coverage through your home insurance policy after all. But the extended warranty option is certainly worth investigating!

Exclude the Easy Replacements

Another possible way to decrease your homeowner's insurance rates is to exclude the things that are easy to replace, or that you may not even really want anymore. For example, you may not be all that fond of your dining room table, in which case there isn't a point in having it insured if you'd just as soon replace it altogether for a newer option. Older items that aren't worth nearly as much as what you purchased them for may not be worth insuring as well.

So make a list of things of value that you absolutely need to have replaced if something happens to them, and make a list of things you don't necessarily have to have insured if it will make a positive impact on your home insurance payments. Your insurance agent should be able to offer you some guidance in terms of what should and shouldn't be left on your second list of "insurance leave outs".

Homeowner's insurance is an extremely important resource to have, but that doesn't mean that you should have to pay an arm and a leg for it. With the help of the techniques listed here, you should be able to keep your rates low without sacrificing protection. For more information on homeowner's insurance, check out a site like http://www.unitedsecurityagency.com.

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