We recently did a deep dive into our homeowners insurance and we’re sure glad we did! We’ve been with the same insurance company ever since I got a life insurance policy as a gift on my 18th birthday. Back about 15 years ago, when we were living in Westminster, I was complaining that our homeowners insurance premium crept up every year. Someone knowledgeable in the industry advised me to call in and ask the company to review the policy. I learned that there was an automatic inflation amount factored in, so our policy went up every year without any review. I called and asked for a policy review. That call brought our premium down by about $200 a year.
We are in a different house now—it’s a much bigger house due to the need for an an accessory (in-law) apartment, so this policy is significantly more than our previous policy. Again, I noticed the premium creeping up each year. A couple years ago I called just like I had in the past, and the representative I spoke with initially thought my premium was high and she said she would see if they could rewrite the policy and reduce the premium at least a little. She put me on hold to look into it, and when she came back on the phone she cautioned me against doing anything with my policy. She didn’t mention anything about being underinsured, but she did say that if they were to ‘rewrite the policy’, which were her words, our premium would only go up. I wasn’t happy about that, but I didn’t read further into it.
Why did we really look under the hood of our homeowners policy in 2025? It was initially that I thought our premium was very high. It was more than that, though. Something else was really nagging at me—on the same night in January 2023 that Jay’s heart rate dropped to 21 and he ended up needing a pacemaker (here’s a story about that—Our Crazy Emergency Room Visit Surprise), our acquaintances Al and Amy lost their house in a fire that caused a total loss while they were away visiting their daughter overseas. As of this writing, Summer 2025, years after the fire, their house still sits there as a burned out shell. In summary, we were paying more than we wanted to, and we were afraid of the ‘what if’ based on conversations we’d had with people who continue to go through the process with their insurance company. When considering a new insurer, we wanted to read reviews from people who had significant claims, not just people who say their insurance rep is a nice guy.
I knew from the declarations page on our home insurance what we were insured for, and in hindsight, I definitely should have known better—being that I’m a realtor, I’m involved in the building (and costs associated with) new construction homes and I was raised by an insurance agent.
I don’t like to be hassled by sales people, so as a person in a sales related field, I don’t hassle people. But it seems that in the course of the past five years (through Covid, or after, as construction prices were all over the place), someone from our insurance company should have called to discuss this policy and alert me to the fact that we were very underinsured.
So much so, that when we interviewed both our new company and a highly recommended local insurance agency, the consistent message from both was that we were really only insured for about 50% of the current cost to rebuild. I really would’ve appreciated a phone call or email from our previous company encouraging us to take a serious look at that.
Our problem, we realized in January 2025, was that even though our insurance coverage represented the fair market value if we were to sell our home, the cost to rebuild if we had a fire or other catastrophic event would be significantly more.
During the last six months, as I researched more about homeowners insurance, I learned that if you have a catastrophic event–say your house burns to the ground–you won’t likely need to replace your foundation, and a fire shouldn’t affect your septic system or well, and you’d obviously still have the land. Both Amica and the other insurance agency used a very similar square-foot cost for rebuilding our home and they were both right around $330 per square foot, assuming that we wouldn’t have to replace the well, the septic, the foundation or the land as part of the rebuilt costs.
Take a look at the declarations coverage page of your homeowners insurance and ask yourself if the structure coverage makes sense. What is your finished square footage? Multiply it by $330. If you don’t know your finished square footage, reach out to me and I’ll send you the assessor card for your property so that you can determine that.
After we realized how underinsured we were, and before we completed the process of the required in-person inspection visit, a local realtor friend of mine had a devastating house fire, and the loud and clear message she has said over and over again is to make sure that you are insured for the full rebuild cost of your home.
In the end, we didn’t specifically save too much on our homeowners insurance by switching to a new company, but bundling our homeowners, auto and liability policies was a winning combination for us because our total insurance premiums are now less than our total insurance premiums with our former company. We ended up going with Amica—they sell direct to consumers, they have great reviews, and very importantly—in the unlikely event that something devastating happens to our property, we’re much more comfortable now, knowing we are insured for the cost to rebuild our home. So we’re saving about $1,000 a year in total on our home/auto/liability insurance, and most importantly we’re adequately covered.
It must be noted that I had heard very good things about Anderson, Bagley and Mayo, which has offices in Westminster, Gardner and Leominster. I talked with both Celeste and Jay at ABM and highly recommend that insurance agency. An insurance agency has access to multiple companies—they will find the best combination of companies for your situation, and their premiums are very competitive. It’s just that our house is so unique (someone once referred to our house as a unicorn) with the inlaw apartment, 2 kitchens and some other things that limited the number of options we had.
We’re glad we did a deep dive on our homeowners insurance. If you’re considering doing the same, I recommend that you locate the declarations page from each of your policies, be prepared to talk about the specifications of your house (and be transparent with them since you want them to actually insure based on what you actually have) and then call your insurance agent, or connect with the two contacts below.
*Bonus: We kept our old insurance policies in place for 2 months after we signed up with Amica, so we were knowingly paying double-premiums–just in case something didn’t work out with our switch. When I finally called to cancel the old policies, my old insurance company asked me if I had any open claims (the answer was no), and they backdated the cancellation and promptly issued a refund. I could not believe it.
Please reach out if you’ve benefited from this story. I’d love to write a follow up.
CONTACTS
Brett Scott, Amica
888 342 6422 extension 84522
bscott@amica.com
Anderson, Bagley and Mayo
CONTACT FORM and individual office contacts
Photo above: December 2024 Westminster house fire
