Lowering your home insurance premiums

I was shopping around for some home insurance for the new house, and started to think on how I can lower the premiums.

Home insurance is usually made up of two components, the building insurance and the contents insurance. You can't really do much to save on building insurance, but make sure that your insurance policy is for it to be replaced as new.

Content insurance is for what is being held on the property such as your furniture, your electrical goods and clothing. There are a number of things that can be done to help reduce your premiums. Essentially, if you made your home as secure as possible, it will help minimised your premiums. Here are some tips that I got from talking to one of the insurers.

1. Deadlock all your entries - Ensure that all of your external doors have deadlocks installed. Also ensure that your windows are have a deadlock on it as well, if not, at least check that it is lockable with a key.
2. Put up screen doors - Along with a front door, put up a screen doors. This will allow you to open your front door but still have the house secure.
3. Install an alarm - This is an expensive option and has a on-going cost if the alarm is monitored. However, most insurance companies sees this as a positive security measure.
4. Lockable front gates - At the front of your house, install a set of front gates that leads on to you property. Also make sure that you can gate can be lock.
   
5. Put a lock on your garden shed - Your garden shed contains many tools which a thief can use to break into your home. Secure it with a pad lock on the shed's door latch. If you are not able to, go to you local hardware store and buy a door latch that will.
6. Leave no tools lying around - Along with putting a pad lock on your shed, make sure that all your tools are put away. You don't want to give the thief a helping hand.

A lot of these security measures will have your property looking like your local bank, and will not make you home very homely. That is the way I felt when I had a discussion with the insurers recently. How effective these measures will be is totally dependent upon the area that you are living it, and some of these are not even necessary.

An interesting note is that our house has not settled yet, but many others have advise us to insure that property as soon as possible as it is in our interest to have it insured. The vendor's insurance policy is unknown to me, so to be safe, I purchase some insurance for it today. So if something happens to the house before it is settled, its repaired cost is covered.

When the current house is settled, the unused insurance policy will be carried over to the new house as ended up using the same insurance company.

Photo by Brad Harrison