How to decrease your homeowner's insurance costs

Securing your home is one of the easiest ways to lower your premiums. While you are going to have to spend, some extra money to secure your home, in most cases it will be worth the expense because you will be saving money in the end. If you secure your home you can save anywhere from 5 to 20% on your homeowner's insurance, how much you save is going to depend on what steps you take to secure your home and what insurance company you are using.

If you are building a new home there are some things that you can do before the home is built to help save on your homeowner's insurance. One thing that you can do is meet with the builder and select a more durable roofing material, having a durable roof will prevent damage from windstorms, which makes it less likely that the insurance company will have to pay a claim to get the roof fixed. If you live in an earthquake prone area, you can get your house retrofitted to better resist earthquakes, which will lower your insurance premiums.

Even if your home is already built there are still some structural changes that you can make to help lower your insurance premiums, so that you can save money each year. You can look into reinforcing your roof to make it more durable. You can also add prickly bushes around the front of your house or even flimsy trellis, these are supposed to act as a deterrent to burglars, just keep in mind this might not lower your homeowner's insurance, but it can still help to keep you safer. You can also add storm shutters or shatterproof glass to your windows to help lower your insurance premiums; many insurance companies offer this feature to lower your premiums.

Adding smoke alarms is an easy to save 5% on your insurance premiums. The number of smoke alarms that you must install to save money on your homeowner's insurance is going to depend on the size of your home. General guidelines are that you install a smoke alarm in every bedroom of the house and in the main areas, such as kitchen and living room. You can usually purchase smoke alarms in 2 packs for around $15, so how much you spend will depend on how many you need.

You can also add a burglar alarm to help lower your insurance premiums. When it comes to burglar alarms, there are two different kinds to choose from. Which type of alarm you choose is going to determine how much money you can save on your premiums. There are burglar alarms that you can install that do not reports to a monitoring company or the local police station, they are simply noisemakers that are supposed to alert people to trouble at your house. These types of alarms can usually get you a 5-10% discount on homeowner's insurance.

The second type of alarm is a more sophisticated alarm and reports to an alarm monitoring company or the local police or fire department. These alarms are more expensive to install and you will have to pay a monthly fee for monitoring, so you want to look at the numbers before you decide to go this route. Not all insurance companies will allow you to lower your premiums by installing a monitored alarm, but if they do, you can usually save up to 20% on your insurance premiums. Most of the time the money that you are paying out each month is more than the amount you can save on your insurance policy, so in the end you have not managed to save any money.