50% premium increase in Olympia, Washington

[Larry Tran]

Hello everyone,

We have a small rental (2 beds, 1 bath 1000 sqft craftman bugalow) in downtown Olympia, WA. My insurance will be renewed Nov 1, 2023. Safeco is the current insurance company and they gave us a new renewal notice with 50% increase in premium, going from $818 to $1,239. This is a rip-off! Does anyone have any suggestion for other broker / insurance company that is not as crazy.

Appreciate any insights/inputs.

Larry

[Chris Seveney]

Quote from @Larry Tran:

Hello everyone,

We have a small rental (2 beds, 1 bath 1000 sqft craftman bugalow) in downtown Olympia, WA. My insurance will be renewed Nov 1, 2023. Safeco is the current insurance company and they gave us a new renewal notice with 50% increase in premium, going from $818 to $1,239. This is a rip-off! Does anyone have any suggestion for other broker / insurance company that is not as crazy.

Appreciate any insights/inputs.

Larry

 this is common across the country. Why? because insurance is based on replacement value and due to the significant uptick in construction pricing and everything else - throw in the insurance world is having record number of claims and its the perfect storm.

What we did is increased our deductible and shopped around. 

[Sherief Elbassuoni]

@Larry Tran, unfortunatelly, this is common. Most insurance companies increases premiums.

Contact the big players (Statefarm, Geico, ....) and also an insurance broker, and shop around

[Cameron Moore]

What I would give to see those premiums LOL. In Texas, the average home premium is between $2k-$3k. More people are filing claims (because more middle class is cash broke so they have to file smaller claims than historically), Catostrophic losses, carriers are unable to reinvest the premiums to be profitable, material cost, labor shortage/cost, etc. 

Do what @Sherief Elbassuoni said above. During Hard markets, you should have a broker and 3 other big captives shopping your rates on renewal.