Best Renters Insurance in Chicago

If you live in a rental home or apartment, renters insurance helps prevent you from paying out-of-pocket expenses for damaged belongings or liability claims. To help protect you from unexpected disasters, Allstate, State Farm, and Farmers all offer affordable and comprehensive renters insurance coverage to Chicago residents.

To help Chicago renters choose the best renters insurance company, the This Old House Reviews Team described the plans, coverage details, and pricing of the top three providers in the city.

When deciding the best renters insurance coverage for Chicago residents, our team looked at multiple factors, including customer service, plan options, discounts, and more.

• State Farm: Best Endorsements
• Allstate: Best Coverage Options
• Farmers: Most Customizable Coverage

State Farm: Best Endorsements

State Farm offers some of the most extensive renters insurance coverage, with no caps on personal property or loss of use coverage. If you’re looking for coverage beyond personal property, liability, loss of use, and medical payments to others, State Farm offers eight additional coverage options that you can purchase.

Compare the advantages and disadvantages of a State Farm policy:

Pros and Cons

Take a look at the pros and cons of using State Farm renters insurance:

State Farm is specific in explaining the events that are covered in each renters insurance plan. This provider covers losses that fall into the following three categories:

• Accidents—Coverage includes impacts from vehicles, falling objects, fire, smoke, and water damage from appliances or plumbing.
• Weather impacts—Weather impacts include damage caused by the weight of snow or ice, lightning, windstorms, hail, and water damage from frozen plumbing.
• Malicious mischief—This includes coverage from theft, vandalism, riots, and civil commotion.

Allstate: Best Coverage Options

With an online tool that helps you calculate the value of your belongings, Allstate provides the tools necessary to create a customized policy that fits you and your home’s needs. Allstate offers standard personal property, loss of use, medical payments to others, and liability coverage, with five optional coverages available for purchase.

Take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of an Allstate renters insurance policy:

Pros and Cons

Discover the pros and cons of using Allstate renters insurance:

To help its customers save money, Allstate offers five renters insurance discounts:

• Multi-policy discount—If you purchase renters and car insurance policies from Allstate, you can qualify for the multi-policy discount.
• Safe home discount—Certain safety features in your rental like smoke alarms or security systems can qualify you for this discount.
• Easy pay plan—Signing up for automatic payment saves you 5% on your policy.
• 55 and retired discount—If you’re at least 55 years old and retired, you can save 25% on your policy.
• Claim-free discount—Not filing a renters insurance claim can save you up to 20% on your policy, and increases each year you stay claims free.

Farmers: Most Customizable Coverage

As an experienced renters insurance agency with over 90 years of experience, Farmers provides customers low deductible options and no limit on personal property coverage. The company simplifies the process of receiving a renters insurance quote, allowing customers to receive their quotes online by filling out personal and property information.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of a Farmers renters insurance policy:

Pros and Cons

Learn more about the pros and cons of using Farmers renters insurance:

Although Farmers only provides one add-on coverage option, the company offers separate insurance policies that can supplement your renters insurance. The two policies include:

• Pet insurance—This helps cover the cost associated with your pet’s surgery or physical rehabilitation.
• Umbrella liability insurance—This coverage offers you an extra layer of protection that helps cover the costs of at-fault wrecks.

Like many cities, renters insurance policies in the Windy City contain liability, medical payments to others, personal property, and loss of use coverage. In addition, many providers offer optional coverage, or endorsements.

Here’s what each type of coverage entails:

• Liability—This coverage protects you if you inflict injury or damage to a neighbor or their property. Landlords typically require $100,000 worth of liability coverage.
• Personal property—Personal property coverage helps cover the expense of unexpected damage to your personal belongings.
• Medical payments to others—If someone is injured in your home, this coverage helps pay their medical bills.
• Loss of use—If you have to evacuate your home due to an unexpected event, loss of use coverage pays for additional living expenses, like the cost of food or a hotel room.
• Endorsements—Endorsements are optional coverages offered by a provider. Typical endorsements include earthquake and jewelry coverage.

In 2017, the average cost of renters insurance in Illinois was about $13.91 per month, according to the Insurance Information Institute. That was below the national average of $15 per month.

Before selecting a renters insurance plan, consider the following factors:

• RCV vs. ACV policies—These policies relate to personal property coverage. Replacement cost value (RCV) policies cover items based on their value at the time of purchase. Actual cost value (ACV) policies cover items based on their current value, which factors in depreciation over time. Some plans allow you to choose between RCV and ACV personal property coverage, while others are preselected.
• Named peril vs all risk policies—Named peril policies cover damages specifically described in your policy, while all risk policies cover all damages except the ones listed as exclusions in your policy.
• Discounts—Common discounts include bundling renters and auto insurance, installing home safety equipment in the home, and being claims-free.

If you’re not sure which renters insurance policy is best for you, compare the providers below.

We recommend State Farm, Allstate, and Farmers renters insurance for renters in Chicago who want comprehensive coverage at an affordable rate. Before selecting a policy, we encourage you to get renters insurance quotes from all three companies to help you compare costs and coverage details.

The This Old HouseReviews 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 renters 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 renters 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 renters insurance companies higher if they offered the six main types of renters 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 (BBB) ratings.
• Additional benefits (15): Companies that offered optional features, like discounts and endorsements, scored higher than competitors that didn’t.

Our 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.