Nevada law does not require a homeowner to have homeowner's insurance, but if your home is financed through a bank or other financial institution, you may be required to have homeowner's insurance as part of your mortgage agreement.
But even if you aren't required to have homeowner's insurance, it makes good financial sense to cover what is probably your biggest asset. A homeowner's policy also covers the things inside your home.
With a homeowner's policy, your home and belongings are insured against many types of natural disasters. However, it is important to know which types of natural disasters are not covered, such as flood and often wind damage. You are also covered against burglaries and injuries to others on your property.
Underinsuring their homes is one of the biggest mistakes that many Nevada homeowners make. Recent statistics show that almost 25% of Nevada homeowners do not have enough homeowner's insurance to replace their home and its contents if it were destroyed.
As a whole, home prices are higher now than they were just a few years ago. Homeowners should check their insurance policies to make sure they still cover the full replacement value of their home in today's market.
That brings us to the bad part, which is having to find cheap homeowner's insurance.
You can keep the cost of your insurance as low as possible by doing a few things. Since fire is a big worry for insurance companies that write homeowner's policies, making your home safer against fire by putting in fire and smoke detectors and at least one fire extinguisher in the kitchen can cut your insurance costs by a lot.
Burglaries are also a big part of how much your homeowner's insurance costs, so anything you can do to make your home less appealing to thieves should help you pay less for your premium.
Start by making sure that every door in your house has both a standard lock and a deadbolt that works. Make sure you can lock every window in your house, even the ones on the second floor. Cut back all the bushes near doors and windows to make it harder for thieves to hide while they do their work.
Surprisingly, having a good credit score is also a way to keep your insurance costs down. Homeowners with good credit are less likely to have insurance claims, so they are a better risk for insurance companies.
Once you've done those things, it's time to go online and compare the policies and prices of different insurance companies. There are a number of websites on the Internet that make it easy to compare policies and find the most affordable Nevada homeowner's insurance. If you spend a few hours comparing one day, you might be able to save yourself and your family hundreds of dollars in insurance premiums every year.
