Mobile home insurance is one of the safest and most reliable ways for you to protect your financial assets, and insure your property for the future. However, although they can save you a lot of money in your time of need, policies can also cost quite a bit to maintain each year that you sign up for coverage.
Mobile homes, sometimes called manufactured homes, are getting better and better as technology allows factory-built living arrangements to be stronger and more spacious.
Despite their name, not all mobile homes are actually movable once they have been placed on a property. Some of these homes are built on-site, and often even look like smaller versions of traditional houses.
However, no matter what kind of mobile home you have, they are more vulnerable to the elements and damage by perils than a standard home. Therefore, since it is crucial to get the right insurance coverage for your mobile home, it is just as important to be able to afford that coverage.
What goes into mobile home insurance costs?
In order to be budget-minded about your mobile home insurance coverage, it is critical to first understand the various costs that will be associated with your policy. The first, and easily most varied, cost that you will be responsible for is your insurance premium. This is the amount of money that your insurance company of choice will charge you every year in order to maintain your coverage.
Most premiums are paid to insurers on an annual basis. However, mobile home insurance policies can tend to be a bit more flexible than other homeowners policies in certain regards, so you may be able to choose twice-yearly or quarterly payment plan options as well. Your premium amount is influenced by a variety of different factors, including:
- How much your mobile home would cost to rebuild, or its replacement cost.
- How big your mobile home is, along with the property it sits on.
- How old your mobile home is (newer homes are generally cheaper to insure).
- How much coverage you would like to purchase, including optional coverages.
- How much you would like to set for your deductible.
These premiums are often your most prevalent mobile home insurance costs, as you will be paying them regardless of whether or not you need to file a claim and put your coverage into use.
The other big cost that is associated with mobile home insurance is your deductible. This is a cost that you will need to pay whenever you file a claim with your mobile home insurance, and it represents a small percentage of the cost of your claim.
In order for your insurance company to cover any damages to your property caused by a natural disaster or theft, you must first pay your deductible out-of-pocket for each claim that you make.
Generally, the higher your mobile home insurance premiums are, the less you will be asked to pay for your deductible. Likewise, the less you pay for a premium, the more you must pay to meet the deductible.
Additionally, your costs can vary based on any optional coverage options you have with a standard mobile home coverage plan.
Deciding to Make a Change in Your Mobile Home Insurance
Oftentimes, people do not do quite as much research about their insurance as they should. Because of this, they rely on just one or two pricing quotes from insurance companies, and pick their policies from a very limited pool of choices. Therefore, getting many quotes to choose from at the beginning can make your options feel much less limiting, and even show you premium costs that you might not have thought were possible. But even if you do more research than the average mobile home owner, chances are high that there is an aspect of your mobile home insurance that you wish was more comprehensive or affordable. Making the change from one insurance company to another can be a difficult one, but you may not even need to with the right information. Lowering the cost of your current mobile home insurance policy can be fast and easy, if you know the right places to look.
Tips for Saving on Mobile Home Insurance
Perhaps the best and easiest way to pay less for your mobile home insurance policy is to ask your insurance company for their list of discounts. More often than not, your company of choice will have dozens of different discounts for customers, and you are likely to qualify for at least one or two of them. However, these insurance companies may not know that you qualify for them without getting that knowledge directly from you. Some of the many mobile home insurance discounts that you may already qualify for are:
- Multi-policy discounts: These are one of the most popular insurance discounts on the market, because they are so easy to attain. Instead of going with three or four different companies to cover your auto, life, home and other insurance policies, it can often be a good idea to just have multiple policies with one provider. Not only does it make your monthly or annual payments easier, but most companies provide discounts on all of the policies in your name, as long as they are covering more than one.
- New home & original owner discounts: Insurance companies like when their customers are reliable, and tend to give bonuses to those people. If you are the original owner of your mobile home, this proves to your insurer that you have been or will be a reliable customer in the past, present and future.
- Claim-free discounts: If you are able to go a certain period of time (usually at least a few years) without filing a claim, this also shows insurance companies that you are a responsible mobile home owner. Many companies provide small discounts for being continued customers despite not needing to utilize their coverages often.
- Peril prevention discounts: Because it is never a good thing to have to file an insurance claim, mobile home insurance providers want to incentivize their customers to prevent that from happening. Installing security systems, fire alarms and deadbolt door/window locks can all contribute towards discounts for many mobile home insurers.
Of course, there are certainly other ways that you can save money on your mobile home insurance besides shopping around for quotes and utilizing your insurer’s discounts. One common method to instantly pay less on your premiums is to agree to a higher deductible. There is always a risk in doing this, as needing to file a claim will cause you to have to pay more out-of-pocket in order to get your insurer to pay for the rest of your repairs or rebuilding. But if you rarely tend to use your mobile home insurance coverage, taking the risk on a higher deductible can lower your premium rates to easily manageable amounts. Paying for mobile home insurance is never a fun thing to do, but optimizing your payments as much as possible can ensure that your mobile home is well-protected for the lowest possible cost.
By Admin –
