Car Insurance Depends Greatly On Where You Live

HUGE REGIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CAR INSURANCE COSTS

With the help of our new Enhanced Cost of Living Calculator, we've ranked each state by average Car Insurance Premium and you'll be quite surprised by how much yearly rates vary by state and county. (The full rankings are viewable here).

For the same coverage on the same model of car and same demographic of driver, the yearly premiums ranged from a low of $821 annually in Wyandot County, Ohio to a high of $4,757 in Wayne County, Michigan.

That's right, the most expensive county in the U.S. is nearly SIX TIMES more expensive than the least expensive county - for the EXACT SAME COVERAGE.

As far as state averages, the most expensive state for car insurance is more than 2.5 TIMES the cost of the cheapest state. A recent article in the The New York Times delves into this and we suggest you take a look - it does a good job of shedding some light on this phenomenon. Click to read - "Your Neighbor in an Adjacent Zip Code May Pay Less for Car Insurance."

Our comprehensive rankings calculate the yearly cost of insurance, using the average rates of 5 major carriers for a 40 year old driver with an average commute time, a Honda Accord, with $100/$300/$100 policy limits and a $500 deductible. Not only do we list state prices, we list the cost of the most expensive and least expensive counties in each state.

Here are the 10 states with the lowest average yearly car insurance premium. For comparison, the average over the entire United States is $1503 per year.

Full rankings here.

LEAST EXPENSIVE STATES FOR CAR INSURANCE

1. Maine - $925
2. Idaho- $941
3. Ohio - $951
4. North Carolina - $961
5. Vermont - $963
6. Indiana - $964
7. Virginia - $971
8. Illinois - $1004
9. Iowa - $1016
10. South Dakota - $1057

MOST EXPENSIVE STATES FOR CAR INSURANCE

1. Michigan - $2489
2. Louisiana - $2187
3. Florida - $1786
4. Connecticut - $1766
5. New York - $1755

For a complete spreadsheet of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including figures for each state's highest and lowest priced counties, click here.

This list used data that is newly available in our Enhanced Cost of Living Calculator. To get started, sign up here or click on the screen cap below.  Oh, and we're now including 10 FREE DATA DOWNLOADS A MONTH with Premium Membership.

MOBILE APP UPDATES!!!

We've listened to your feedback and have been tirelessly working on our app. We're happy to announce it's been thoroughly updated for content, user-friendliness, and accessibility.

Here's what we've improved:

New Quick Stats for any location. Quick Stats includes Population, Median Age, Median Income, Unemployment Rate, Median Home Value, and Average Commute Time.

This data is as hyper local as it gets. While you will find these categories on BestPlaces.net it won't be as hyper local as the app since the app uses your devices geolocation to pinpoint your exact location and pull data for the closest area possible, not the entire city.

We also added a new Compare feature based on a lot of the feedback we've received. You can now compare all of your saved locations. To access this feature just go to your favorites and you�ll see a new button at the top of your favorites list called "Tap to Compare Scores". This will bring up a sortable list of Local scores for each place you've saved to your favorites list. We'll be adding State and U.S. scores (and possibly some other data points) to this feature in the next release.

Our app developer Jason Stoyles on the updates: 

"I just want to thank all our app users for your great comments and suggestions. All of the feedback we receive is what really helps us focus on building the features that matter most. This project has really been a labor of love for me personally and I want to make it as great as it can be for everyone who finds it useful, so keep the comments coming and stay tuned for more updates!"

Our app is available for both iOS and Android devices. Click here or on the screen cap below to download. It's free to download, and a Premium version is available for a one-time payment of $2.99.