09/28/2026
The Utah Insurance Department ran something close to a controlled experiment last year, and the result should change how you shop for homeowners insurance around here.
They took one hypothetical $450,000 house in Hurricane, right here in Washington County, and had the state's twenty largest home insurers price the identical policy on it. Same age, same fire protection class, same coverage, same $1,000 deductible. Fifteen of them quoted it. The cheapest came back at $671 a year. The most expensive came back at $4,392.75. The middle quote was $1,417.46.
Nothing about the house changed between those numbers. The whole spread is underwriting appetite. Which means if you take the first quote your lender's preferred agent hands you, there is a real chance you are carrying two or three thousand dollars a year you did not have to.
Here is the part almost nobody in town knows. Flood is never included in a standard homeowners policy, and St. George holds a Community Rating System Class 6 rating, the best in the state of Utah. That discounts flood premiums 20 percent inside the mapped flood area and 10 percent outside it. Of the sixteen Washington County communities in the National Flood Insurance Program, St. George is the only one that earns any flood discount at all.
Two more worth knowing. Utah wildfire insurance law changed on January 1, so an insurer now has to use the state's official wildfire map and put its reasons in writing if it drops you over wildfire risk. And your policy is priced on what it costs to rebuild, not on what you paid, because the lot cannot burn down.
So pull three quotes instead of one, insure to rebuild cost instead of purchase price, and check the flood map for the actual address rather than the subdivision.
If you are weighing a specific house and want to know what its flood zone, its age and its distance from a fire station are going to do to the number, call or text me at 435-200-5508
The full write-up with every source behind these figures is linked on our page.
