Myrtle Beach homeowners’ insurance is rising across the board, and odds are yours will too. Ours went from $1500 a year to $2200 a year, but we got it back down…here’s how.
Living in Myrtle Beach is getting more expensive, and for once I’m not talking about the real estate prices, I’m talking about homeowners’ insurance. Let’s talk about why that is and most importantly what we did to get it back down so you can do it too.
My name is Lance MacMillan, and I’m a licensed Realtor with Mango Homes powered by Keller Williams Myrtle Beach and this video is meant for people looking to buy real estate here as well as for folks who already own a home here.
The information in here could save you big money and that’s really important for a lot of people right now, so if you give this video a thumbs up and watch till the end, it’s not long, it’ll guarantee that YouTube will show it to more people then they’ll be able to save money too…and that makes you an awesome person for helping them.
First off, why rates have gone up so much?
While everyone loves to beat up on insurance companies, they have a lot lower profit margins than most people think. Your average insurance company, per investopedia.com, clears around 2 to 3% profit after taxes and expenses. That puts the industry squarely in WalMart territory, a company famous for pinching pennies to keep prices low for consumers.
And yeah, that insurance company profit margin still ends up in the billions of dollars in a lot of cases, but it can get wiped out if a big something happens, forcing them to raise rates or go bankrupt.
Well, the past couple years have seen not one but two big somethings.
The first big something is inflation. Inflation has worn down not just your bank account, but the bank accounts of home insurance carriers across the country. Simply put, it’s more expensive to repair a home now. Lumber, shingles, transportation, labor…it’s all more expensive than it was just two years ago.
You’re not allowed on here.
The second big something, specific to home insurance carriers underwriting coastal real estate, was the 2021 hurricane season. Even though Myrtle Beach itself was spared any trouble last year, the 2021 hurricane season was the third costliest one on record per Wikipedia. The lions share of the carnage was done by Hurricane Ida. Ida tore up Louisiana, destroyed crops in the midwest, flooded New England, and dropped a $44 billion dollar bill on US insurance carriers.
So that’s why home insurance rates are going up across Myrtle Beach and everywhere else in the country. Those added costs aren’t going away. But what can YOU do about it?
First off, understand that in South Carolina you have the right to shop around and choose whichever insurance carrier you want at any time. It doesn’t matter if your escrow account just paid out insurance for the entire year yesterday. You can always buy a cheaper policy and get a prorated refund on the insurance you’ve already paid for…assuming you find one. So how do you find one?
You don’t just settle for the guys who insure your SUV.
You don’t just settle for what the online shopping tool says.
You don’t just settle for the big-name insurance company on the corner.
We tried all that. In our case, none of that helped us.
What DID work was calling a local home insurance broker.
Insurance policies on coastal South Carolina real estate MUST have hurricane riders either added on top of or built in to the policy, and some of the biggest insurance carriers out there just don’t issue those. Local home insurance brokers know exactly who writes insurance with hurricane protection and under which conditions they do it. So, who’d WE personally use?
I’ll tell you but first, big disclaimer:
I have no personal or business relationship with the insurance broker we chose, and I stand to gain or lose nothing if you choose or don’t choose them.
We PERSONALLY got our insurance back to sane levels with the Field Insurance Company in Surfside Beach. But again, your mileage can and will vary.
There are all kinds of conditions that differentiate who gets approved on what insurance and with which rates. You can have 10 different people buying the exact same home in the exact same subdivision, and it’d be entirely normal for 9 of them to all get approved at different rates and one to not get approved at all.
So shop around! We have a healthy number of insurance brokers here that deal with dozens of wholesale insurance carriers and with all those choices they could potentially find you a way better deal than you could find yourself. Lower insurance means a lower escrow and lower mortgage payment every month, and more money in your pocket means less stress. And this is Myrtle Beach…you didn’t come here to stress about things, you came here to relax right?
Hey, if you remember to come back after watching this, how about let other viewers know who you ended up using for insurance in the comments below! You could really help your neighbors out and again, a thumbs up spreads this video, helps other people save money, and makes you an awesome person.
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Thank you for watching, and remember if you’re buying or selling…go mango!