Just got the notice that our escrow account was debited for this year’s insurance.
It went up more than 10% over last year’s, which in turn was about 15% more than the prior… all in all, since 2009 it’s gone up nearly 70%. It’s more than doubled since we bought this house 11 years ago.
Are others seeing the same kinds of increases?
Getting price estimates online, I’m getting quoted figures of half of what we’re paying now. Are those “suck 'em in and get 'em hooked then jack it up” rates?
Auto has also gone up, though not nearly as much - it would go up maybe 50 dollars a year. I had a speeding ticket about 2 years ago and it didn’t go up that much even after that, though this year’s went up 15% or more (maybe they finally processed the ticket?).
Aside from a windshield-chip claim 2 years ago, we’ve had no claims on either policy. Nor have we made any special upgrades to the house - OK, we put hardwood floors in a couple of rooms but that was well before the rate hikes started snowballing.
The company is Liberty Mutual, which is not known for being the cheapest. And their ratings online aren’t the greatest lately either. It may be time to end this 30+ year relationship.
Liberty Mutual’s been doing the same to me – they seem to go up maybe $100.00 - $150.0 year. They kind of low-balled an introductory rate when I signed up, but it’s more than doubled since then. (And I don’t remember my salary or the value of my house doubling during that time-frame )
Sadly, I tried getting a quote from the people providing my car insurance, and it was in the same ballpark.
Insurance is usually intensively competetive. Call a few companies for comparision quotes or call an independent agent who will shop for you. If your math is correct, you’re getting screwed.
They may be playing the “hope nobody notices” game, which when insurance is paid from escrow is probably a fair bet much of the time. We’ve had it happen in the past and switched insurance companies a couple of times. Just got this year’s renewal quote from Allstate and it’s around $30 less than last year’s.
I don’t understand why, but I have to switch insurance companies every couple of years or so in order to get decent rates. There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for most companies to ‘price-match’ or lower their own rates. So, the switch back and forth dance it is. Silly.
Last year, I spent a goodly amount of time shopping around for house and car insurance when we moved back into the house. Our previous insurer increased every year about 5 % no reason given. We finally decided on Liberty Mutual and ended up saving 400 bucks a year. Now I’m going to have to watch Liberty Mutual , if they sneaked up on Mama Zapa they could sneak up on me!
There might be a regional effect in insurance prices; if you live in an area that sees lots of claims, your rates might rise more quickly than if you lived in a less accident-prone region. Our home insurance (which we’ve had for over 20 years) has stayed virtually stable over the years, but we live in a region that has relatively few disasters.
Since you have such a long relationship with this company, I think it’d be worth calling your agent and asking “WTF?” Seventy percent seems a little excessive in just a few years, especially if you haven’t had any claims.
My home-owners insurance has gone up quite a bit. My agent says that it’s because they adjust up the amount they pay out to accommodate increasing construction costs for replacement. Also this year they’ve stopped paying for full replacement roofs when damaged by hail, and now pay a prorated amount based on the age of your roof. That will be a significant savings over all for the insurance company, since Tennessee gets a lot of hail. It won’t lower rates though, I bet.
I’ve lived in my current house for almost 10 years and I’ve never made a claim. My insurer, Tennessee Farm Bureau, has covered both this house and my previous house, and have been easy to deal with when I had a claim on my old house. And they don’t have breed prohibitions on dogs, which is good for me since I have a doberman and two german shepherds, amongst other breeds.
Actuary checking in, one who works for a major insurance company, and one who until recently specialized in Homeowners pricing. Depending on the state you live in, a 70% increase in the last 4 years is completely in line with overall industry trends. The primary drivers of the increase are construction costs (as noted above) and increasingly bad weather patterns over the last 8 or so years, which have finally forced many companies include higher provisions for the weather in the premium. Also, if you live in a state with significant wind-hail exposure (Kansas, Oklahoma), you may see an additional increase and/or a decrease in hail-specific coverage.
Good point on the disasters - we’re DC-metro and while we weren’t wiped out by Sandy the way NJ and NY were, some places did see some damage. However, that would just explain this year’s, not the previous 4 years.
I do have a message in to the insurer, and I’m going to be doing some shopping around. I want to make sure we don’t miss out on coverage we’d regret (my sister-in-law got shunted from one insurer to another and someone decided she no longer wanted sewage backup protection - a fact she realized when she found her basement flooded with sewage a few months ago :eek::mad:).
Oh - and yes, increased construction costs are certainly at play for some of the increase, but the increase does seem excessive.
I wish my insurance had only doubled in the 14 or so years I’ve owned this house. The South Florida insurance market sucks. There are very few private companies writing policies, and the ones that are tend to be fly-by-night unknowns. I use AAA as my insurance agent, and they don’t recommend any of them.
Most of us are insured by the state-run “Citizens” company.
I was dropped by Tower Hill after Hurricane Wilma. And I’m one of the very small minority of people in the county who didn’t have an insurance claim after the storm.
We switched to Erie and our payments went down by nearly half. We bundled the house and 2 cars along with flood insurance. We originally had Travelers, which charged $5.00 more for one car than Erie charges for both.
As Smokey’s mama once said, “You better shop around!”
I was insured by State Farm for about 20 years, never a claim, insured 3 cars and a motorcycle. Never a claim in all those years. Was dropped a couple years ago for no reason.
You live around here too, right? I think you mentioned the east coast of Florida somewhere.
Sadly, I think the big insurance companies just wanted excuses to get out of the state, because…Hurricanes. They only want to insure people who won’t have natural disasters. Which makes sense, from a business perspective, I guess.
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