Oklahoma home insurance rates keep rising, and it’s not just because of the extreme weather we’ve had in the state.
Numbers from Bankrate show Oklahoma is ranked in the top states with the highest home insurance costs.
An insurance expert said Oklahoma’s numbers have always been high due to our extreme weather, but other factors like inflation and the number of providers play a role.
“Oklahoma has always been ranked one of the higher, in the top 10 for the United States,” said Krista Smith.
Krista Smith works for Tulsa Insurance Guy, a local company that partners with dozens of insurance carriers to find clients the best rates.
She said the several tornadoes this year, like the ones we saw in Barnsdall, Sulphur and Claremore, led to high home insurance costs.
Recent numbers from Bankrate show that Oklahoma’s average annual premium is $4700 for a $300,000 home, which is $2,470 above the national average.
“Oklahoma was already bad, and it’s just gotten worse.”
She said the weather is just one factor.
A big reason for the home insurance increases is the fact that we already don’t have very many insurance carriers in the state and we’re losing more.
“We have had movement in the market that we’ve lost 2 insurance companies,” said Smith.
She said we’re also still feeling the impacts of COVID.
“More recently, post COVID, we saw like everybody the cost of rebuild supply goes up, labor goes up,” she said.
The Oklahoma Insurance Commission said this is the third or fourth year of being in a hard market, and the storms haven’t helped.
Smith hopes that, with time, those numbers will stabilize.
“We do tend to level out; how long that’s going to take is the big question.”
The insurance commission said there are about 115 insurance companies in the state, and they encourage people to shop around and not be afraid to change providers.
To view the numbers from Bankrate, click here.
