Reduce the Cost of Living with Cheap Home Insurance: 8 Tips

Buying a home is expensive enough, and now you have to worry about purchasing home insurance? You don't want to just accept whoever your real estate agent recommends. That's not going to get you the best home insurance rates. Even if you already have a home, there's nothing in the rule books that says you can't switch home insurance providers. There are a few things you can do to get the all around cheapest home insurance without compromising on quality.

1. Raise your home insurance deducible. The tried and true tip for lowering any type of home insurance is increasing the deductible. If you take on more financial responsibility, the home insurance company will cut you some slack in the form of lower home insurance premiums. Just be ready to pay up when it comes time to file a home insurance claim. The Insurance Information Institute calculates the average policyholder can save 24 percent on home insurance costs if they raise their deductible from $250 to $1,000. Pick the highest deductible you can comfortably afford.

2. Bundle your home insurance with another insurance policy. Many companies that provide home insurance also sell auto insurance. Bundling, also called a multiline discount, could save anywhere from 10% to 20% on your home insurance premiums.

4. Buy newer construction. If you are still in the market for a home, consider the hidden costs of home insurance. While an older home may be cheaper in most cases, it may have higher home insurance costs. The newer the house, the better the electrical, plumbing, heating and structure of the home. Besides, just the fact that it is new means it has faced less damage than an older house.

5. Cover the cost of your home not the land. You could be buying thousands of dollars worth of home insurance coverage that you don't need. Most homeowners think they need coverage to commensurate with the market price of their home. That's not true. You need enough coverage to rebuild your home if it is destroyed, this does not include the value of the land it is on.

6. Get discounts. Anything that makes your home safer may help lower your home insurance costs. An advanced security system, smoke alarms and other features can garner discounts at many companies, but you'll need to do a search to find out just which home insurance companies offer the coverage. Another hidden discount - discounts for senior citizens. Since seniors are home more than the average person, they spend more time maintaining their homes and can spot potential problems including fires. Some home insurance companies provide discounts for households without smokers, since cigarettes cause more than 20,000 home fires a year.

7. Make sure your credit report is accurate. If you have good credit, it could help you shave some of the costs off your home insurance premiums, so make sure your credit report is free of errors that could potentially hurt you.

8. Compare home insurance rates before you buy. Why pay hundreds of dollars more for the same exact home insurance coverage? If you receive quotes via 2insure4less.com, you get multiple home insurance quotes to compare and it makes finding the lowest price among home insurance companies extremely easy.