Because our agency focuses on insurance in Oregon, I find myself wondering how our home insurance rates here in Oregon compare to other states.
Bankrate has put together a list as of Jan 2025, and though their methodology leaves some questions (see below), it still is helpful as a rough guide.
The research puts the average cost of US home insurance at about $2,100 per year for a home built in 2017 with $300k of coverage. What about Oregon’s cost? Oregon’s average is below half of that, at $989.
Oregon is in the top 10 most affordable states for home insurance, #6 in fact.
Does their info mesh with what we see through our agency?
The cost of home insurance through our agency tends to be well below that average number so we’re glad to see that for our customers.
The homes we insure in the Hillsboro, Beaverton, and Portland areas average require about twice the home coverage as that included on the study. While the study reported cost per $300k of dwelling coverage, our homes average around $600k of coverage, which would mean about $2000 (2 X $989) a year with their data. We’re well below that cost on average.
Even so, take that with a grain of salt because we strongly suspect the Bankrate article favors higher overall averages in every state–see below on Limits of the Method.
In short, we have it pretty good here in Oregon when it comes to home insurance rates–even with the painful price increases that have been going on.
Let us know if you’d appreciate a home insurance comparison.
Limits of the Method and Study.
The good stuff. We like that their study reports cost per $300k of dwelling coverage as that helps account for the fact that homes have different reconstruction costs. And we like that there’s info for all 50 states. I expected Florida to be expensive!
Even so, they don’t tell us too much about the source of their data. They say it’s from a company called Quadrant Information Services, but other than that not too much. They somehow gathered pricing info from various insurers. Which insurers? They don’t tell us. How many quotes did they run? Don’t know.
It’s important to remember that the study is dealing in basic averages so it takes no account of different levels of policy coverages offered by various insurers. For example, within one home insurance carrier policy, you can select coverage options that can swing the pricing up or down significantly, say 25% either way.
Finally, incentives matter. Bankrate is a giant media conglomerate that makes money by getting you to request quotes through their website. In other words, they have an incentive to favor higher average costs to motivate more click-throughs.
How so? Well, the more their numbers make you think you’re overpaying for insurance, the more likely you are to click for a quote. That’s where they make their money. If you click their banner for a quote, you’re on your way to becoming a “Lead” that they can sell to some insurance companies and agencies. It’s big money. (If you’re wondering, we don’t buy these leads. Or any for that matter.)
At any rate, this incentive to favor higher averages likely wouldn’t affect the state rankings, but it could affect the averages.
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