The Best North Dakota Homeowners Insurance Companies
No matter what your reasons for deciding to purchase a home in North Dakota, you’ve already made an excellent decision. The aptly-named Peace Garden State is full of wonder and natural beauty. Of course, the state’s beauty and draw comes with some notable hazards and risk. North Dakota inherits a decent section of “tornado alley,” making wind and related damages some of the most common issues to strike homes. The summer heat increases fire risks across the state and can become a real danger for homes and property. Winter time delivers its own challenges and threats to your home with unrelenting freezing weather and crushing amounts of snow. Luckily, a strong homeowners insurance policy can protect you from a financial emergency in the event your home is affected.
How We Found the Best North Dakota Homeowners Insurance Companies
To help you compare your options, we leveraged the tried and true methods straight from our national review of the best homeowners insurance companies. We dove deep into customer satisfaction scores, financial stability ratings, coverage options, and types of discounts. We also combined our findings with insights into what makes a comprehensive plan for the majority of North Dakotans, then evaluated the five biggest providers in the state.
It’s important to remember that home insurance is an extremely personalized service; what serves your neighbor may not always be the right choice for you. And since insurance companies use complex algorithms to assess risk and assign premiums, the difference between coverages and costs can vary significantly — even as close as the next ZIP code or the next street over. Our recommendation: Get quotes from the providers available where you live, starting with the big names in this rundown.
The 5 Best Homeowners Insurance Companies in North Dakota
State Farm
With State Farm, you have some of the most critical coverage for any home in North Dakota. Basic coverage on a typical homeowners insurance plan from State Farm includes protections against fire, wind, hail, lightning, freezing water, and weight of ice (just to name a few). State Farm even rolls water and sewer back-up into its basic coverage, which is uncommon amongst our other top picks.
Should you decide to increase your safety net, State Farm offers a number of optional endorsements (add-on coverages). One of the best is its worldwide Personal Articles Policy. For example, if you take your brand new laptop on a tour through Europe, and it ends up in the hands of a thief, your home insurance policy will cover it. By comparison, most other companies limit this coverage to the U.S.
At the local level, State Farm is one of the only providers (the other is Liberty Mutual) that offers inflation protection coverage as an add-on. Inflation Protection will periodically adjust your dwelling, property valuations, and premiums to keep up with the constant change in market values.
State Farm doesn’t offer a dedicated homeowners insurance app for mobile devices as Liberty Mutual and Allstate do, but it does offer an online tool that matches its capabilities. State Farm offers a helpful guide to creating an inventory of your home to better calculate the personal property coverages in your policy.
Other great resources include State Farm’s wide range of calculators. From Buy or Rent to Mortgage Refinance, nearly any calculations you may need to make regarding your home or its values can be found here. State Farm’s Simple Insights (their dedicated guide for homeowners insurance tips) covers a range of topics on homeownership, like increasing your home insurance literacy to figuring out the best way to greet your new neighbors.
Allstate
If this is your first time shopping for homeowners insurance, Allstate is the best place to start (even if you don’t end up signing up with the company). You can start by skimming through an overview of basic coverages found in your home insurance policy. Then, move onto the more advanced tools to better evaluate your situation and factors before exploring optional coverages.
Allstate offers a unique Common & Costly Claims tool. This will let you check the top five most common damages, as well as the most expensive, inside your ZIP code. For example, if “theft and burglary” is one of the most frequent claims made in your area, it’s probably a good idea to increase your personal property coverage.
Once you’re a policyholder, it’s a good idea to keep track of your valuables in case you ever need to file a claim. Allstate has an app for that called Digital Locker. It’s a simple convenience, but one sorely missed from most other providers we’ve researched. Allstate’s digital locker lets you create a comprehensive visual and descriptive list that will prove invaluable if you ever need to file a claim.
Allstate offers plenty of chances to save on your policy, too. While the company may not offer the most discount options of our top providers, it is the only company in our review that applies a welcome discount of 10% for your first two years. It’s also the only company to reward digital-savvy homeowners with a discount for those who set up auto-pay for their premiums.
Other standouts include discounts for new or improved roofing materials, savings for easy to incorporate security features, like smoke alarms or deadbolts, and keeping a clean claims history. It’s safe to say that Allstate gets how important savings are to new homeowners, and the company makes them easy to find and earn.
Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual competes closely with State Farm in its comprehensive coverage offerings. Like State Farm, Liberty Mutual even tackles some rarer optional protections, like inflation coverage and identity fraud protection. Among the standard coverages included are property and dwelling, personal possessions, and liability. It will also make up for additional living expenses when you are out of your home for repairs, and even rolls in loss forgiveness, meaning Liberty Mutual won’t hike up your premiums just because you filed a claim.
In our local quote evaluation, we found Liberty Mutual offered us the best price for our policy when shopping online. On top of that, it offers the most initial dwelling coverage by nearly $80,000. This could be extra useful if you’ve recently built the home you are insuring and expect value to go up in the near future, or if your home incorporates non-traditional structure or style that’s expensive to replace.
Complete, affordable coverage is Liberty Mutual’s key strength, backed up by its wide range of discounts. While the company doesn’t offer the same variety as Allstate, it still has great options to bring a comprehensive plan into an affordable range. It’s as easy as keeping your home smoke free, shopping for a policy early, or simply insuring your home for its replacement value rather than merely the market value.
Travelers
Like the other big names we looked at, Travelers ranks highly in both claims and customer satisfaction. Travelers misses a few protections in its basic coverage (you’ll have to purchase extra riders), and its discounts list is comparably slim. For example, Travelers will make you add an extra endorsement to cover sudden water backup from things like your sewer pipes, which other insurers like State Farm or Liberty Mutual will roll into a basic plan. However, the company does excel in the “green” market where others fall behind and offers a single coverage that none of the other top picks have decided to tackle yet: Green Home Coverage. In the event of a covered loss, this coverage provides additional protection that can help repair, replace or rebuild with green materials. If your home meets the requirements of an environmentally-friendly home, you can even be eligible for a unique discount from Travelers, another first and only in this list of top contenders.
USAA
Not only does USAA’s home insurance cover most weather-related events as well as fire and theft, but the policies uniquely cater to military personnel. For example, if you’re active duty or deployed and you lose your uniform, the policy can help cover the costs. There’s also replacement cost coverage which covers your home and belongings at today’s value; no depreciation.
Guide to North Dakota Homeowners Insurance
Evaluate your homeowners insurance quote
We sought quotes from each of our providers, using data from an average home in Fargo area (3,000 sq. ft valued around $200,000). Remember, quotes and availability can change even within the smallest regions; it’s best to investigate all the options before deciding on a purchase. Our goal here isn’t to tell you which provider is the cheapest. Instead, we’ll show you how to compare the level of coverage against your quote premium, so you can figure out which provider’s offer is the best for you.
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* Allstate and Travelers require a phone interview to complete a quote, which requires more personal and sensitive information. Give each company a call before making your final purchase decision.
Even with just a couple of quotes, it’s easy to see that providers in this area are willing to offer ample coverage for your home and possessions. These basic plans would easily take care of most claims and losses imposed on our average home. It is also interesting to note where each provider focuses when providing coverage estimates.
State Farm drastically beat out Liberty Mutual in the personal property category, suggesting that it’s better prepared to receive a claim related to anything inside your home. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise — State Farm’s Personal Articles Policy is one of the best in the business. That’s also why our quoted deductible — the amount you’ll pay for losses before your home insurance kicks in — is $500 more expensive.
Still, our Liberty Mutual quote offers nearly $80,000 more in dwelling coverage than State Farm’s. Along with its lower deductible and comparable premium, the policy is ideal if you’re primarily focused on protecting your home from external damages like wind, hail, or fire.
At the end of the day, it’s all about what you are most interested in protecting. Homeowners insurance policies are highly customizable and can cover a very broad range of claims. That’s why we recommend comparing quotes from multiple providers.
Protect your home from North Dakota’s summertime hazards
North Dakota is most often stereotyped as a winter-dominated land, nearly always covered by a blanket of snow. But during the summer months, average temperatures bounce to the upper 80s. Along with that balmy and dry weather comes the risk of wild and brush fires.
Damages from fire incidents are far and away the most expensive average claims in the entire property and casualty insurance sector.
Insurance Information Institute
Fire protection comes standard with all four of the providers we talk about here. But it’s important to adjust your coverage correctly so you’re financially protected in the event your home is damaged — or worse, destroyed — by fire.
Our top pick for homeowners insurance in North Dakota, State Farm, does an excellent job at detailing how to calculate current and replacement value of your home. This makes it easy to figure out exactly how much coverage you’ll need.
As average temperatures are forecasted to rise and drought risks become more prevalent, it’s important to understand best practices in preventing devastating fires. The state government’s website offers a few prevention tips, including completely dowsing all outdoor heat sources with water, whether it’s the coals in your barbecue or the campfire by your tent, and strictly observing all burn bans. The state as a whole has begun to prep for extreme heat hazards, too. The North Dakota Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan is a large-scale evaluation of the state’s current and forecasted dangers and how to reduce the effects.
North Dakota Homeowners Insurance FAQ
Are there any other homeowners insurance companies in North Dakota?
There are plenty of other homeowners insurance companies to consider for those living in the Peace Garden State. Aside from the ones we covered, there’s also:
You should definitely try to get as many quotes as possible in order to find the best homeowners insurance for your needs.
What does “replacement” cost mean?
This refers to the amount it would take to completely rebuild your home in the current market, which could be substantially different for a home that was built decades ago. It can also refer to the cost to repair or replace any damaged, lost, or stolen items.
Do I have to buy homeowners insurance in North Dakota?
Technically, no, you are not required by any law to carry homeowners insurance in North Dakota. However, most financial institutions that cover mortgages on homes will require that you cover the property in the event of a loss.
The Best North Dakota Homeowners Insurance: Summed Up
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