Hello! I need some advice about car insurance in CA. We are in OH and our D is a junior in college in CA. We’ve leased her a car that is registered in CA. She does have an apartment in CA that she lives in full time, and will likely be living there for the forseeable future.
I have recently found out that a car registered in CA must be insured in CA, not under our family policy here in OH. At least, as I’m shopping, that is what a new quote told me, and what an agent in CA with our current company (Allstate) told me.
So, I got a quote from that CA agent and WOW…it’s almost as much as our entire family of 4 policy (including D and her car) is now!
So, 1) does anyone else have a student and CA registered car, or 2) CA residents in general, what are some reasonable yet good car insurance companies? As with all things CA, I am having sticker shock! Thanks!
My D has USAA insurance as her grandpa was in the service and we got him to insure his golf clubs briefly so she could get a policy.
We got an agent and she sold us something like Mercury Insurance, I believe? It is higher to cover her for 6 months than H&I for 12 months with our 2 cars!
Having good student discount and low mileage driving helps. Living in zip code where there are fewer accidents helps too—when she moved from near USC to nice suburbs, premiums fell nicely.
Ugh! I was thinking of letting my D18 take my 5 year old Mazda to school in San Diego next fall (we are IL residents). I assumed I could keep the car registered and licensed in IL on my policy since she would bring it home for long summer etc. Yikes? Am I wrong? I would do everything aboveboard.
Well, you could. But you take a risk. If you own a car, it’s your car, you or any driver can take that car out of state. People with two residences often do this. The problem comes if there are provisions that don’t allow this.
I know many people whose kids take cars out of state to college. They simply do not tell the insurance companies. The car is registered and insured in the parent’s name.
Check with your home insurance company. Our son took a car we owned with him to grad school out of state. Our insurance company did cover cars in that state…and had no issue as long as the car was registered to us, and the kid was a full time student. Our kid was not a resident of the other state…and paid OOS tuition as well.
The OP leased a car in CA…that is registered in CA…and that is likely the reason she needs CA insurance.
Try Geico. On another thread, folks reported Geico has the best auto insurance premiums.
When our s had his car in another state in college, USAA said if the car was in that state more than 50% of the year, even though it was registered in our name and in our state, it had to be insured in his college’s state (and we also lost the family discount for him)
We’re in CA and our kids went to school in PA and NY. We already owned the car and I called our insurance (AAA) and, as long as they were students, we were allowed to keep them on our policy and pay for them with their school zip code. It was comparable to what we’d paid when they drove the same car at home. If I’d gotten them a separate policy and we registered the car in their new state, it would have been more. I don’t have any words of wisdom for the OP but, if anyone’s considering this type of arrangement, call your current insurer first. Our car remained registered in CA–had to be to remain on our CA policy. Again, this worked while they were in school only.
As an aside, when the kids were done with school and one was going to keep a car in Philly, AAA was going to charge $4000/year! Somehow we were able to get them to access our CA policy, which D was still listed on, and they re-rated her and the bill went down t $1400. She was thrilled but we were shocked to see how much insurance could be for a young driver that the insurance company considers “new” (she’d been driving for 6 years) with zero accidents or tickets.
@bobo44 , @thumper1 is right. The reason we have to get a CA policy is because the car is registered in CA. There are some states that require this, apparently CA is one and according to my local agent, KY and FL are others. (And my local agent didn’t know about CA…we’ve had this car under our OH policy for a year gulp.)
Our daughter moved to CA, and her car insurance is almost as much per month as we pay per 6 months here in PA. Annual registration fee is about 10 times what we pay in PA.
you are seeing sticker shock bcos you are trying to insure a young single driver (<25) on her own policy, with no discount for having homeowners or other insurances.
Try the usual suspects: Geico, Amica, Progressive, Mercury, AAA.
btw: why does your D need a car in college? (Yeah, I get the car culture out here, but plenty of kids in colleges don’t have cars on campus.) Unless she is a in program that requires a work practicum and daily driving, occasional Uber/Lyft would have been a whole lot cheaper than a lease+insurance.
She lives off campus, has a babysitting job, does other (acting/directing) work on the side, and lives there in the summers now, working and directing. And actually the lease was the one thing CHEAPER about the car in CA than at home!
But…important update! According to CA DMV, (I called today because I couldn’t verify online in the code/law that she had to have CA insurance), she does NOT need to have a CA policy. We need to email her insurance verification to the DMV, she recommended every six months. Because it is not a CA policy, their electronic verification would be able to verify it and she would eventually get a letter that she would have to submit proof with.
This actually matches up with 1) Not being able to find anything about it in the law/DMV site , 2) the CA agent saying that she would get a “hassle” at the DMV, and 3) our current local agent insuring the car in the first place.
We just transferred one of our vehicles to our S who lives in San Francisco. We went to the AAA office to take care of the title/registration and decided that it would be easier to get AAA insurance. We were shocked at the price! We called Geico and they charged HALF of what AAA was charging while at the same time providing better coverage! He is under the age of 25 and has a clean driving record.
Geico and Esurance both have competitive rates and very user friendly web sites. They pull up most of the relevant information about your car after you enter some personal identifying information.
As a first time customer the rates you are offered may vary slightly, sometimes significantly, each time you search. If you get what seems like a low ball offer, grab it right away as it may not appear in a subsequent search. The market rate goes into effect after the first year, but it’s worth trying for the initial discount with intermittent searches over a few days. I think they use some sort of algorithm to snag new customers, similar to variable pricing offered by airlines when booking through Expedia.
@MJMAMA , same…while I was working on D’s CA car I am getting new quotes for all of us. AAAs is double what we are paying now with Allstate. But make sure you see my edit above, you CAN keep a CA registered car on an out of state policy by taking some extra steps to send your insurance verification in!
Our HI insurers said they couldn’t insure a car outside of our state of HI. Both Liberty Mutual and a small local company said nope.
That’s why we used Mercury and now USAA to get CA policies. With the good student discount, it was less expensive than it would otherwise have been. We switched the car from our name to the kids once it arrived in CA.
