Costs of home insurance policies are always a concern for Texas home owners. It doesn't help when premiums rise. Whether you live in or outside of Grapevine, you want to know about ways to bring the cost down and we don't blame them for asking.
A good thing to know is different insurance companies offer discounts. One of the discounts people ask about is the home security system discount.
Those selling this equipment and service have told clients installing their system will automatically equal a discount. That's when we usually get a call asking, "Will it lower my cost?"
Simply put, yes, a security system is a factor in lowering the cost of your policy. What is not so great about that?
It doesn't account for much of a discount with many of the insurance carriers we do business with.
Let's Take A Look
Insurance carriers tend to tout home security systems with the though they can limit loss that leads to paying claims.
A discount means more likelihood that bad things won't occur. The unfortunate reality of this is that most of these systems tend to focus on home invasions or intrusions, monitoring with cameras, motion detectors, alarms and sensors on portions of the house.
It's great that the police will show up ASAP when notified of some nefarious activity, but smash and grab happens fast and from the insurance company's point of view, your stuff stands a good chance of being stolen permanently.
This equals a tiny percentage of discounted premium. Don't expect more than something between 5% and 10%.
How to Improve?
Protecting for safety more than theft tends to help more with the discount. Fire monitoring or water shutoff capabilities of a monitoring system prevent further damage and the risk of total loss. Insurance carriers like that.
This means the prevention or at least the suppression of large claims.
A system that is instrumental in preventing this type of loss, making sure the seconds that count are in the insurance carriers favor (and yours), the greater likelihood you'll see a better discount on your premium.
With claims of water damage being the second most frequent claim type for North Texas homeowners (after hail), the payouts tend to reach substantial amount. Water can destroy just as much as fire, if not more.
Any device that senses a water issue and shuts off the valve will make insurance carriers very happy. This is valuable to Grapevine home owners because it results in discounts for alerting on and hopefully preventing extreme water damage.
Cut to the Chase
The bottom line: Demonstrating you have a monitored alarm system to the insurance carrier should result in discounts on your premium paid.
We can't tell you how much that will result in without knowing more about your situation, goals and needs. Then we shop for the right insurance carrier and give you options.
As an independent insurance carrier, we can do that.
If there is a discount to have, we will help you find it.
