The most important factor when buying real estate is location,and as you might expect, it’s a significant factor in establishingrates for homeowners insurance as well. What is the average premiumfor a house worth $300,000 in Georgia compared to one inneighboring Alabama or Florida? What’s the average nationwide?

Panelists at the Property/Casualty Insurance Joint Industry Forum 2015 on Jan.13 acknowledged downward pressure on rates, especially forhomeowners policies because they aren’t seeing much growth in newhome sales. With that trend in mind, if you’re pricing policies andrenewals in different locations, it’s helpful to know what the mostrecent data on the cost of homeowners policies shows.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)released its 2012 Homeowners Insurance Report on Jan. 20, providingdetailed data on market distribution and the average cost by policyform and insurance amount of homeowners insurance across the U.S.The report provides countrywide and state-specific premium andexposure information for standard noncommercial dwelling fireinsurance and for homeowners insurance package policies (HO-1,HO-2, HO-3, HO-5 and HO-8), tenant policy HO-4, andcondominium/cooperative unit owner’s policy HO-6.