Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

AUSTIN – Just because Texas has the second-highest average home insurance rates in the nation doesn’t mean that a Dallas-area homeowner has to pay such high premiums.

A new comparison of rates in the area by The Dallas Morning Newsfound that premiums vary widely, and that the five largest companies don’t necessarily offer the best prices, despite their dominance of the market.

The analysis also indicated that average premiums have risen less than 2 percent from a year ago, based on recent filings by the 27 largest insurers with the Texas Department of Insurance. Average auto rates were mixed, with prices up slightly in some areas and down moderately in others.

Insurance company filings showed that average rates in several ZIP codes in Dallas County ranged from $1,250 to $1,311 for coverage on a 10-year-old brick veneer home valued at $150,000 – excluding the lot. Those prices reflect an average credit rating and no claims in the last five years.

The actual rates charged by individual companies ran from as low as $761 a year in some areas to a high of $1,929, although some differences in policies contributed to the gap.

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Consumer groups cautioned that deregulation of policy forms in Texas has made it more difficult to compare policies that have different prices.

“You can save money, but the caveat is to make sure the policy fits the need of the individual homeowner,” said Alex Winslow of Texas Watch. “Homeowners who shop based only on price do so at their own peril. A lot of policies are cheap for a reason – they don’t have the level of coverage a homeowner needs.”

Winslow said it has become “extremely difficult” for the average consumer to shop the insurance market because of all the variables in policies and the fact that most offer less coverage than they did a few years ago, when Texas had standard policies for all companies. The Legislature deregulated policy forms in 2003.

If the state required all companies to offer a handful of standard policies that could be compared more accurately, he argued, prices would be more competitive – and lower.

“By and large, the rates are still too high in Texas,” he said, noting that only Florida has higher insurance premiums among the 50 states.

Read More: The Dallas Morning News