How we calculate the figures on our city pages

The short version

We would rather show you a range with its workings than a single confident number we cannot defend. Three rules govern every figure on a city page:

• Anything measured is attributed to a named public source with a date.
• Anything estimated is shown as a range, never a point, and is labeled as an estimate wherever it appears.
• Where the honest answer is that a number barely varies by city, we say so rather than manufacturing local variation to fill a page.

That last rule is why you will not find a separate Los Angeles car insurance price on this site. Under Proposition 103, California carriers must weight your driving record, annual mileage, and years of experience ahead of where you live, so a city-by-city auto price would imply a spread that state law does not permit a carrier to charge.

Sources

Every assumption, stated

These are rendered directly from the code that performs the calculation, so this page cannot fall out of step with what the site actually does.

Rebuild cost as a share of market value Our assumption

A homeowners policy is rated on Coverage A, the dwelling limit, which is the cost to rebuild the structure. It is not rated on market value, because market value includes the land and the land does not burn. To turn a market value into a plausible Coverage A range we assume the structure accounts for 40 to 65 percent of market value. This is OUR ASSUMPTION, not a sourced figure, and it is deliberately wide: land is a much larger share of value in expensive coastal markets than in inland ones. A real Coverage A comes from a replacement-cost estimator run on your actual house.

Average premium by dwelling limit Sourced

Once we have a Coverage A range we do not model a premium. We look up the published California average premium for that band in the NAIC report, whose California figures are supplied by the California Department of Insurance. The low and high ends of the Coverage A range are looked up separately, which is what produces the estimated premium range.

Vintage of the home premium data Sourced

NAIC average premiums reflect 2022 experience, the most recent year published. They predate the 2023-2026 California market disruption and the rate increases approved since, so treat them as a conservative floor rather than a current quote.

Why renters premiums are not city-specific Sourced

An HO-4 renters premium is driven by the personal property limit you choose, not by which California city you live in. The published California average is 169 dollars a year across nearly 2.9 million house-years of exposure, and the spread across coverage bands is far larger than any plausible spread between cities. We therefore show the statewide table by coverage limit and do not invent a per-city renters number.

Why auto premiums are not city-specific either Sourced

Under Proposition 103 the mandatory rating factors, in order of weight, are driving safety record, annual miles driven, and years of driving experience. ZIP code and territory are optional factors with restricted weight, so where you live moves a California auto premium far less than it would in most other states. We therefore publish the statewide range and show the local crash and DUI picture as risk context, rather than implying a city-by-city price difference that Proposition 103 would not permit a carrier to charge.

How to read the crash rankings Sourced

Rank 1 is the worst, not the best. Rankings compare a city against other incorporated California cities of similar population using the Empirical Bayesian Ranking Method, which weights observed crash counts against population and daily vehicle miles traveled, so they are exposure-adjusted rather than raw counts. One known distortion: crashes reported by the CHP on roads with shared jurisdiction inside city limits do not count against the city, which flatters cities split by a state highway.

When we withhold a figure

The Office of Traffic Safety does not count crashes attended by the CHP on roads with shared jurisdiction inside city limits. In a small number of cities whose main arterials are state highways, that leaves a reported crash count far below what the city's population would suggest. Rather than publish a flattering ranking we know to be an artifact, we suppress the crash section on those pages and explain why in place of the data.

What these figures are not

They are not a quote. Average premiums describe what Californians as a group paid for a policy form at a coverage level; they say nothing about what any particular house or driver will be offered. Rebuild cost in particular has to be estimated on the actual structure, not inferred from a market value. If you want a real number for a real address, ask us for a quote - we are an independent broker, and it is free.

Reviewed by Michael A. Kassing, Licensed California Insurance Broker, California license 4445775. Data last assembled 2026-07-29.