The Hartford Homeowners Insurance Review

As a homeowner, it’s easy to worry about the unexpected occurring to your home. All kinds of incidents, from hailstorms and fires to theft and vandalism, can lead to serious inconveniences, not to mention high out-of-pocket expenses.

Luckily, with a home insurance policy, homeowners can rest easy at night knowing that their home’s structure and contents are safeguarded when these unwelcome incidents occur.

However, it’s not as simple as picking a home insurance company’s name out of a hat. Companies can differ in terms of their coverage options, their availability, the quality of their customer service, and more.

The Hartford home insurance review below, completed by the This Old House Reviews Team, provides information to help you determine if this home insurance company is the best fit for you and your home.

Our Take on The Hartford Home Insurance

The Hartford, a Connecticut-based company with more than 200 years of experience, offers extensive home insurance coverage through its partnership with AARP. It seems that, in most cases, coverage is only available for AARP members, but the details aren’t clear. Many endorsements are available, making it very easy to customize your coverage.

Unfortunately, The Hartford’s home insurance coverage is only available in 28 states. Overall, we give the company a score of 93.62 out of 100 on key metrics like coverage, availability, customer service, and more.

On The Hartford’s Better Business Bureau profile, complaints cite billing issues and difficulty receiving refunds. Reviews note poor customer service and long delay times.

Pros & Cons

Let’s compare the advantages and disadvantages to home insurance coverage from The Hartford.

✔ More than 200 years of experience
✔ Many endorsements
✔ Several tiers of plans

✘ Only available in 28 states
✘ Difficult to contact directly—site redirects to AARP

How Much Does The Hartford Home Insurance Cost?

The exact amount you pay for The Hartford homeowners insurance will depend on multiple factors, including your property value, the size of your home, the materials it was constructed with, where you live, the coverage limits you select, the insurance deductible you choose, and more.

Discounts

The Hartford offers a few discounts to help lower the cost of your homeowners insurance coverage.

The Hartford Home Insurance Discounts

Type	Description
Multi-policy	Discount for bundling your auto and home insurance policies
Protective devices	Discount for installing devices like smoke detectors or burglar alarms
Retiree	Discount for retired homeowners or homeowners who work less than 24 hours per week
Claims-free	Discount for goinga specific period of time without filing a claim

Coverage

The Hartford offers all industry-standard coverage in its basic policy through AARP.

The Hartford Home Insurance Coverage

Type	Description
Dwelling + other structures	Coverage of your home’s interior and exterior structure, along with detached structures like garages and sheds
Personal property	Coverage of your personal property, including furniture, appliances, electronics, and clothes, in case of a covered loss
Loss of use/Additional living expenses	Coverage of costs associated with living outside of your home, including dining and accommodations, when it is temporarily uninhabitable due to covered damage
Personal liability	Coverage of legal fees if you are sued for injury or personal property damage to a guest on your property
Medical payments	Coverage of medical expenses of a guest who gets injured at your home

The Hartford offers many endorsements to allow you to customize your home insurance coverage.

Endorsements

Type	Description
“New for Old” Protection	Replaces your covered personal property with brand new items of the same quality
Personal injury liability	Protects against damages from libel or slander
Reimbursement for replacing locks	Pays up to $500 for new locks if your keys are lost or stolen (with a $100 deductible)
Identity fraud expense	Covers your out-of-pocket expenses, up to the policy limit, of restoring your identity
Disappearing property deductible	Reduces your deductible by $50 for every three years you go without having a loss
Equipment breakdown	Covers the cost of repairs or replacements of home systems, electronics, and appliances that break down (note: wear and tear damage does not apply)
Valuable items blanket coverage	Extends your coverage for damaged or lost valuables
Green rebuilding	Raises your policy limits up to 10% when you repair or rebuild with environmentally friendly materials
Replacement plus patented coverage	Covers the additional costs of rebuilding a bathroom or kitchen with Universal Design features
Assisted living care coverage	Extends your liability, additional living expenses, and contents coverage to your relative in an assisted living care facility
Scheduled personal property	Covers 100% of selected items’ insured value if they are damaged or destroyed
Rental property protection plus	Provides the liability coverage for up to four family rental units
Water backup and sump pump overflow	Covers the damage from water backup and sump pump overflow

The Hartford offers two tiers of home insurance coverage through AARP. You can add other endorsements to your plan.

Endorsements Add-ons

Coverage	Advantage	Advantage Plus
“New for Old” Protection	✓	✓
Personal injury liability	✓	✓
Reimbursement for replacing locks	✓	✓
Identity fraud expense	✓ ($25,000 limit)	✓ ($50,000 limit)
Disappearing property deductible	✓	✓
Equipment breakdown	N/A	✓

State Availability

The Hartford home insurance, provided through its partnership with AARP, is available in the following 28 states:

Customer Reviews of The Hartford Home Insurance

The Hartford homeowners insurance reviews we found on the company’s Better Business Bureau profiles were all negative, but it’s worth noting that the majority of BBB reviews for most home insurance companies are left by unhappy customers.

The company has several BBB profiles, each devoted to a different franchise location. Its reviews are all housed on its headquarters page, which is not accredited but holds an A+ rating from the organization. See what some customers had to say about their experience with The Hartford.

Ann N. said:

“Dishonest company. Added extra fees to the initial quote at the end of the policy without customer knowledge.”

Kevin H. said:

“Horrible, they do not know how to communicate with customers or help contractors complete insurance work for the insured. We found more damage than they approved and it’s been two months since I submitted my revised estimate to them. I’m about to file a legal grievance on a couple of reps.”

Our Conclusion

The Hartford offers extensive homeowners insurance coverage, featuring many different endorsement options, in nearly every state. Unfortunately, it offers its home insurance through AARP. While it appears that some people who are not members of AARP can qualify, the details on this are lacking.

It might also frustrate some customers that they need to contact AARP when they have claims issues or customer service concerns instead of going straight to the source and contacting The Hartford. Overall, we give The Hartford a score of 93.62.

To ensure you find the right provider for your needs, we recommend getting quotes from multiple home insurance companies that serve your area by calling 855-948-5219 or using this tool:

The Hartford vs. The Competition

See how The Hartford stacks up against some of its top competitors on key metrics.

Comparison

Provider	The Hartford	Lemonade	Amica®
Get a Free Quote	Not available through This Old House	Visit Site	Not available through This Old House
Our Score	93.62	83.50	96.60
State Availability	28	23*	47 (not available in AK, FL, or HI)
BBB Rating	A+	B+	A+
Years in Business	211	6	114
24/7 Claims Service by Phone	✓	✓	✓
Protective Devices/Safety Features Discount	✓	✓	✓
Ordinance protection included	X	X	X
Bundling Discount	✓	✓	✓
Mobile App	✓	✓	✓

*Lemonade home insurance is available in AZ, CA, CO, CT, GA, IL, IN, IA, MD, MA, MI, MO, NV, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, TN, TX, VA, WI

Other Homeowners Insurance Resources

The Hartford Home Insurance FAQs

Our Rating Methodology

The This Old House Reviews Team is committed to providing comprehensive and unbiased reviews to our readers. This means earning your trust through transparency and having the data to back up our ratings and recommendations.

With that in mind, we created an objective rating system to score each home insurance company. Here’s what that review process looked like:

We analyze the information on each company’s website. This allows us to determine what products and services are offered by each home insurance provider.
We get a sample quote from the companies by either talking to a sales representative or by using the online quote tool. This tells us what a policy looks like and costs.
We test customer service by talking to a company representative, finding out their hours of operation, and determining what technological features are available for customers.
We update all of this information on a continuous basis, storing it in a proprietary database that allows us to compare dozens of home insurance companies against each other.

With this data, we created a rating methodology to score each home insurance company. Our rating system is a weighted, 100-point scale based on the following factors:

Coverage (30): We rated home insurance companies higher if they offered the six main types of homeowner protection—dwelling, other structures, personal property, loss of use, liability, and medical payments to others coverage.
State availability (7.5): Companies scored higher if they covered more states than their competitors.
Customer service (15): This factor is based on our communications with the company representatives, as well as the companies’ claims and quotes processes, availability throughout the week, and customer service information found on their websites.
Technology (12.5): Technology can increase the efficiency of filing and tracking home insurance claims. Companies scored higher if they had technology options like mobile apps and online chat functions.
Reputation (20): We gauged trustworthiness based on years of experience and Better Business Bureau ratings.
Additional benefits (15): Companies that offered optional features, like discounts and endorsements, scored higher than competitors that didn’t.

The This Old House Reviews Team has a full-time researcher who collects and regularly updates data points from every company to help us compare them on key factors such as coverage, service, and dependability.

To share feedback or ask a question about this article, send a note to our Reviews Team at reviews@thisoldhousereviews.com.

The Hartford Home Insurance Review