Use the homeowners insurance calculator below to find the average cost of home insurance in your ZIP code. Rates are based on a policy with $300,000 in liability coverage and a $1,000 deductible. Our sample homeowner has good credit and no recent claims.
How to estimate your home insurance
You can also estimate your home insurance costs by following the steps below.
1. Decide how much coverage you need
A typical homeowners insurance policy includes six types of coverage:
Dwelling. Pays for damage to the main structure of your home.
Other structures. Covers unattached structures like sheds and fences.
Personal property. Covers your belongings.
Loss of use. Pays for additional living expenses if you need to move while your home is repaired.
Personal liability. Pays if you hurt someone else or damage their property.
Medical payments. Pays to treat someone injured on your property, regardless of fault. It may also cover you if you, a family member or a pet injures someone away from your home.
Each of these types of insurance comes with its own limit. You’ll pay more for higher limits, but the extra coverage will give you more financial protection if disaster strikes.
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Typically, you need enough dwelling coverage to pay the cost of completely rebuilding your home. An insurance agent can help you estimate this amount.
Insurance companies often set several of the other coverage limits to a percentage of your dwelling coverage. For example, other structures coverage often defaults to 10% of your dwelling coverage limit. Your personal property limit may be 50% to 70% of your dwelling coverage limit.
Liability coverage usually starts at $100,000 and can be higher depending on your needs. Medical payments coverage typically has a low limit, between $1,000 and $5,000.
More Nerdy Perspective
Choosing the right amount of coverage for the structure of your home can be tricky. Get too much, and you’ll overpay for your insurance. Too little, and you might not get enough money from the insurance company to rebuild your home after a disaster. I give myself peace of mind by buying guaranteed replacement cost coverage. With this option, my policy will pay what it takes to rebuild my home after a disaster, even if it’s more than my dwelling coverage limit.
Choosing the right amount of coverage for the structure of your home can be tricky. Get too much, and you’ll overpay for your insurance. Too little, and you might not get enough money from the insurance company to rebuild your home after a disaster. I give myself peace of mind by buying guaranteed replacement cost coverage. With this option, my policy will pay what it takes to rebuild my home after a disaster, even if it’s more than my dwelling coverage limit.
Sarah Schlichtersenior writer for insurance» MORE: How much home insurance do you need?
2. Evaluate your home
Your house's physical characteristics affect the cost of insurance. These could include:
The home’s age.
The materials your house is made of.
The condition of the roof.
The size of your home.
Whether the house has any custom features or high-end finishes.
Whether the house is up to current building codes.
The size and number of other structures such as sheds or fencing.
Additionally, having a swimming pool or trampoline could lead to higher premiums. Insurance companies consider these features to be a liability risk.
Insurers also weigh factors about where you live, such as the threat of natural disasters and the local crime rate.
Let your insurer know if you get a new roof or make other major renovations to your home. These changes could affect your coverage requirements or even get you a discount.
» MORE: The average cost of home insurance
3. Choose your insurance deductible
Your insurance deductible is the amount you pay out of pocket for a covered claim. A typical homeowners insurance deductible ranges from $500 to $2,000.
The higher the deductible you set, the lower your premium. However, you should consider whether the annual savings are worth paying a higher amount in an emergency. If you might not have enough to cover the deductible, choose a lower amount.
If you live somewhere that’s prone to hurricanes, tornadoes or hailstorms, you may have a separate deductible for wind or hail damage. These deductibles are often a percentage of your home’s dwelling coverage. For example, if you have a 2% hail deductible on a home with $300,000 of dwelling coverage, your deductible for a hail claim would be $6,000.
Buying a new house? The earlier you start shopping for homeowners insurance, the better. This is particularly important if you live in a state where insurance can be expensive or hard to find, such as California, Florida or Louisiana. In these areas, we recommend getting quotes before you put in an offer on a house. That way you know there’s coverage available at a price you can afford.
4. Consider extra coverage
You may want insurance for events that a standard policy won’t cover. Examples include floods, earthquakes, sinkholes and backed-up drains. Though this extra coverage will cost you more, it could come in handy if your home is at risk.
Learn more about home insurance coverage options.
5. Get quotes
Many insurers offer online quotes. These tools may use a limited set of information, but they will at least give a sense of your potential costs.
We recommend getting at least three home insurance quotes to find the best value for your home. Make sure each quote has similar deductibles and coverage limits.
Your credit history could play a major role in the cost of your home insurance. Homeowners with poor credit pay 72% more on average than those with good credit, according to NerdWallet’s rate analysis. Learn more about how your credit score affects home insurance rates in most states.
6. Check for discounts
Most insurance companies offer a variety of ways to save money on your home insurance. For example, you can often save 10% or more by bundling home and car insurance with the same company. (See our list of the best home and auto insurance bundles.)
Other discounts may be available for:
Having no recent claims.
Installing home safety or security devices.
Buying a new home.
Staying loyal to your insurance company for a number of years.
See more home insurance discounts.
Strict editorial guidelines to ensure fairness and accuracy in our coverage to help you choose the financial products that work best for you. See our criteria for evaluating homeowners insurance.
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Frequently asked questions
If you have a mortgage, you can choose to have your lender pay your homeowners insurance bill through your escrow account. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay the bill yourself. You may be able to divide your bill into installments, have payments taken from your bank account or pay in another way that’s convenient for you.
It may. Even if you don’t file a claim, insurance companies often raise rates to reflect inflation. (Because of the increased cost of labor and supplies, your house probably costs a little more to rebuild this year than it did last year.) Insurance companies may also raise rates if they’ve had to pay a lot of claims for big disasters such as hurricanes or wildfires.
It depends on where you live. Many states require insurance companies to give you advance notice if your premium is going up. This generally ranges from 10 to 60 days.
NerdWallet home insurance calculator methodology
NerdWallet offers a county-based calculator to help you estimate your homeowners insurance premium. NerdWallet calculated median rates for 40-year-old homeowners from a variety of insurance companies in ZIP codes across all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
The cost estimates shown are based on ZIP code-level premiums aggregated at the county level. Because counties are often made up of several ZIP codes, we used Census Bureau ZIP code-to-county relationship data to apply a weighting factor to each ZIP code based on its share of land area in the county relative to other ZIP codes. We then calculated a weight-adapted median by county and dwelling coverage level based on these weighting factors.
Sample homeowners were nonsmokers with good credit living in a single-family, two-story home built in 1984. They had a $1,000 deductible, $300,000 in liability coverage and $1,000 in medical payments coverage.
We made minor changes to the sample policy in cases where rates for the above coverage limits or deductibles weren’t available.
These are sample rates generated through Quadrant Information Services. Your own rates will be different.