According to the most recent HomeInsurance.com RateReport, which shows the average premiums across all of the states in the country over a 12 month period (as of September), all but two states experienced an increase in homeowners’ insurance premiums.
The two states that saw a decrease in premiums were Washington D.C. and Vermont. All of the other states in the country saw their average homeowners’ premiums increase from 0.1 percent to 5.8 percent more than what policyholders had been paying during the year beforehand.
The average premiums that were used to create the RateReport were the rates that had been sold on new policies through HomeInsurance.com through a number of different insurers such as The Hartford, Travelers, Progressive, Safeco, ARK Royal, and ASI.
According to the co-CEO of HomeInsurance.com, Jana Bell, “Typically we see average rates for new policyholders fluctuate by less than 1% each month. Between August and September 2011 the average increase nationwide was around 2.5%.”
The HomeInsurance.com officials have also noted, though, that they don’t feel that these increases will be a trend that will continue into the future.
According to the other co-CEO of the firm, Carlos Lagomarsino, there are generally fluctuations in the average premiums from one month to the next, and a jump in one month may not indicate that there will be a rate increase that will be maintained over time.
He added that it may simply have been caused by this year’s large number of natural disasters throughout the nation, or that there was just a raise in higher-cover policies in the month of September. Lagomarsino said that we can only know the truth in time.
For information on just California Insurance and property rates.
