Plain description

How this site works

This page exists so that nothing about the arrangement has to be guessed at. It describes what this site is, what it does not do, where its figures come from, and what happens when you pick up the phone.

What this site is

Home Insurance Quote Line publishes written explanations of United States homeowners insurance and carries a telephone number for readers who want quotes. That is the whole of it. The writing is meant to be useful whether or not you ever call, and the number is meant to be the only thing you can click that leaves the site.

It is an advertising service. It earns money when a reader places a call and stays on the line long enough to have a real conversation. That is worth saying out loud, because it explains the shape of the site: there is a phone number on every screen, and there is nothing else asking you for anything.

What this site is not

Roles this site does not occupy

01	Not an insurerNo policy on this site is issued by us, because we do not issue policies. We take no risk, hold no reserves and pay no claims.
02	Not an agency or a brokerageWe do not hold a producer license in any state, we do not represent any insurer, and we do not place business. Nothing written here is a solicitation to buy a policy from a named company.
03	Not a rate engineWe do not calculate what you would pay. Every figure published here is somebody else’s published statistic, identified by source and by the year of the data.
04	Not a claims serviceIf you have an open claim, a coverage dispute or a billing question, the people who can help are your insurer and your state insurance department. This line is for readers who want quotes, and nothing else.

What happens when you call

You dial. A short automated greeting runs, and then the call is routed to an independent provider. The provider asks the questions any quote requires: where the property is, when it was built, roughly how big it is, how old the roof is, whether anyone has claimed on the property recently, and what coverage you carry now. If you have your current declarations page in front of you, the conversation gets much shorter and much more exact.

There is no field to fill in, so nothing you type reaches anyone. The network that supplies the number records that a call occurred, the number dialed, the calling number and how long it lasted. Nothing you say on the call reaches this site.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site carries the year of the data, not the year the document was published, and those two are often years apart. A regulator’s report issued this summer may describe premiums collected three years ago; presenting that as today’s price would be misleading, so we do not.

The sources are mostly the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the United States Treasury Federal Insurance Office, the Census Bureau, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, individual state insurance departments and the statutes they administer, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the Insurance Information Institute. Where a source restricts republication of its tables, we describe the finding, give a rank or a band rather than a reproduced figure, and link to the original.

Where commercial comparison sites disagree with each other by a factor of two on the same state in the same year — and they routinely do — we do not average them, cite them, or quietly adopt whichever number reads better.

Why there is no form

A form would change what this site legally is. A site that collects your details in order to pass them to somebody who wants to sell you a financial product is a different creature, under different federal rules, from a site that publishes writing and a telephone number. We would rather be the second thing. It also means there is nothing here to leak, sell, or resell, because there is nothing here to collect.

Questions about how this site works