Minnesota Home Insurance

Would you rather live anywhere else other than Minnesota? The welcoming hearts of Minnesotans and a warm hearth temper the long season of chilling temperatures, ice and snow. A truly welcoming home embraces your community.

You invite the neighbors' kids over to ice skate, play hockey and build snow forts with your family.

Sure, there is the risk of a drop through the ice, a cold and icy puck hitting a kid or bystander, or just an icicle or snow sliding off the roof onto a visitor. All of the great memories remain intact when you have liability insurance to help offset pain, suffering and medical costs of your neighbors who come to share in winter's offerings.

More commonly you might have wind damage, falling trees and limbs, which cause more mild damages. That brings up a great point. Unfortunately for Minnesotans, making an insurance claim causes future homeowners insurance rates to skyrocket the most of any state in the nation.

Use our FREE comparison tool located above to start your search for home insurance.

When to File a Claim and When to Fix it Yourself

The purpose of homeowners insurance is to cover against catastrophic loss. That means if a tornado destroys your home while you are on vacation, you file a claim to have the house rebuilt. You might feel wrong if you do not call up the insurance company for every scratch, dent and broken window.

You will feel like a fool, however, when you receive your next insurance renewal, which shows a 22 percent premium increase, just for making a claim.

The idea is to weigh the cost of paying the deductible, plus projecting out the 22 percent increase in premiums against the cost of hiring a window contractor. Window installers usually offer free estimates and specialize in their products.

If that same tree bust through the roof, tearing off corner of your house, then a claim is necessary. You need to have a paper trail showing that you repaired the home according to local building codes via the insurance.

Unless you are an architect or engineer and construction contractor, you probably are outside your area of knowledge where rebuilding is concerned.

Finding and Maintaining Reasonable Insurance Rates

Insurance exists to offset the costs to rebuild your house out of pocket. There are times you are forced to make a claim and other times it is an expensive path to take. Now that you have a better idea when to make a claim and when to leave it, learn how to score and maintain reasonable insurance rates.

An ounce of prevention goes a long way toward stabilizing and reducing premium rates.

1. Install an alarm.
2. Subscribe to a safety and fire monitoring service.
3. Bolt fireproof safes to concrete floors to safeguard and secure precious collections, jewelry and other high-value belongings.
4. Maintain property, cutting dead branches and clipping trees that hang over your house.
5. Removing excess snow from your roof.
6. Promptly removing snow from walkways and driveways to prevent injuries and accidents.

Shopping around by comparing quotes from many insurance carriers is another way to save money. It sounds so simple, but comparing quotes every time your policy comes up for renewal is a way to make sure you are getting the best rates possible.

Tips for comparing quotes, include:

1. Compare premiums, exploring the lowest to highest
2. Check insurers' creditworthiness A.M. Best to verify insurers have the financial backing to pay out claims. Choose only among the highest rated insurers.
3. Look for inflation guard to assure the insurance limits will keep pace with inflation.
4. Make sure carriers are providing the correct limits for your coverage. Rule of thumb: determine how much your home costs to rebuild in today's dollars and only buy that much insurance.
5. Double check liability, personal property and included perils across quotes.
6. Consider increasing deductibles as much as possible. It's catastrophic insurance, not something you will need to claim yearly, if ever.
7. Shopping for insurance is an intimidating and scary process. It forces you to look at what can happen and the imagination is unkind. What most policyholders never give a thought to is what would happen if their insurance company actually goes out of business. In Minnesota, the Department of Commerce handles consumer insurance issues. The state keeps a fund to honor such insurance policies and pay out on claims.

Protecting Luxury Items and Listing Possessions

If you ever have to file a claim, the insurer adjuster will ask you how much of a loss you are claiming. If you had an art collection featuring a famous artist's works that followed her career from fledgling painter to fiercely sought after, the term priceless comes to mind.

What the adjuster is asking is for you to prove that you actually had the art and how much you paid for it. That's why an inventory is so important. In a household inventory, you include everything you own, purchase dates, seller, serial number and purchase price.

For a fine art collection or expensive jewelry, you want to buy special coverage for the high price tag items. This is added to your policy via an endorsement. The inventory is a quick way to declare all of your losses. For tips to create a good inventory, go to the Department of Commerce website.

Never keep one and only copy of your inventory. Make copies, keep them online and even send one to trustworthy friends or family outside the region. It's a good idea to keep contact information and policy information with the inventory just in case.

Buying a house is maybe the most expensive investment you will ever make. Building it into a happy home, filled with joy and memories takes time, energy and more money. If you make a claim, rates rise the most in Minnesota, ahead of any other state.

In Minnesota, shopping around and comparing insurance quotes for homeowners insurance and preventing claims are the two biggest ways to keep rates reasonable.

Be sure to use the FREE comparison tool located at the bottom of this page.