While you’re waiting to receive your quote, here’s a preview of what we do to make the quote!  Have you ever wondered what all an insurance agent does to come up with a price for your home?  There are several steps that we take in researching the value and condition of the house you are insuring.

House Insurance Quote Process

Here are 6 steps that we take when quoting a house.  In a perfect situation where the customer gave all detailed and accurate information, the house is new, built in the city limits, and all of it’s information is on-line, a quote can be produced in about 1 hour.  In other cases when we deal with older houses, built out of the city limits away from main roads, and no information is on-line, a quote might take several hours to produce.

Step 1: Find the Property Tax

For homes in Baldwin County, we use Delta Computer Systems Property Link, but if the house we’re researching is in Mobile, we use the Mobile County Revenue Commission to find property tax information.  The property tax gives us important information like the pin number, square footage of the house, # of bathrooms, the year built, # and type of fire places, adjusted cost, etc.  It’s not always an easy thing to find this information, depending on the house.  The customer might not know this information, or might give us inaccurate information, so we need to compare that with the property tax.

Step 2: Pin the Location

To find the location, we use the Pin number from the property tax in step 1 and submit it to the Baldwin County Parcel Viewer.  This is the most accurate way of pin pointing your address.  It’s a hassle, but we’ve got to know the exact house that needs to be insured and can’t rely solely on Google (sorry Google…)

Step 3: Find Mileage to Bay, Gulf, & Fire Station

We must measure the miles from the bay, gulf, and nearest fire station.  To do this, we use Google Earth.  The miles from the bay and gulf affect the premium price: the closer your house is to the water, the more risky it is to insure, and therefore the more expensive the premium will be.  However, if your house is far from the water, the premium will be cheaper.  Finding the distance to the fire department gives us the protection class.

Step 4: Get Pictures of the House

We need pictures to 1) to make sure that the house is in good shape and 2) to have proof of the quality so that it can be rebuilt or restored in its likeness from the ground up.  To get the pictures, we pop the address into Google and see what comes out.  If the house if up for sale, we can find pictures from realtor websites such as Trulia or Zillow.  If the house is a little older or hasn’t been on a realtor website, our only other option is to take Google maps drive by snap shots.  If we can’t even find pictures on Google maps (usually due to distance or trees in the way), then our next resort is to get overhead Bing map pictures.  IF THAT doesn’t work, our last resort is to drive to the house and snap pictures personally.  If the quality of the pictures that we find isn’t good enough, we’ll have to drive out and take pictures of the home anyway. As a side note, we also use Google maps to find fire hydrants, which can be a pain since sometimes we have to use the maps camera to walk hundreds or thousands of feet looking for something that may not be there at all.  The distance to the hydrant also determines the protection class for fire damage.

Step 5: Create the Insurance Quote

Now that we have all of the house information, we use a program called a cost estimator to enter different values where it will give a price.  The premium is determined by all of the information above.

Step 6: Deliver the Quote

When the quote is your hands then the ball is in your field.  We’ll need to confirm some information and ask some questions in order to create an application.  We will need your DOB (date of birth), SSN (social security number), prior insurance info & policy #, mortgage company info if you have a mortgage, and credit card info if you’re paying by credit card.  You can give us a call at 251-945-6666 or fill out the insurance application form on-line.  If you have any questions at all, feel free to call or ask through our contact form. THANKS for checking out Heritage Insurance!  If there’s anything we can do to help or any question that we can answer for you, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!