In their 2014 report the National Association of Insurance Commissioners ranked the state as having the 22nd cheapest average premium based on data from 2011/2012. California premiums average out to $1,030.65 a year.
Nerdwallet, then went deeper, profiling the entire state. What they found probably won’t shock most Californians.
Looking at the top 20 highest paying cities, 17 of them are in Los Angeles County. The City of Glendale is number one, paying on average, $1,379.71. The LA County cities span the entirety of the county, as it ranges from Palmdale (#13) to Norwalk (#20) to Santa Monica (#3). San Francisco (#12), Sacramento (#16), and Richmond (#18) are the non-LA County cities in the top 20.
Turning attention to the cheapest cities, those with lower population densities and lower car theft rates generally led to a city paying below state average. This led to a list of cities that plotted all over the map, though Santa Maria is the cheapest. However, there is an outlier to both of those criteria in #13 on the cheap list, Watsonville out in Santa Cruz County. Watsonville has a population density comparable to most metropolitan areas and a slightly above average theft rate.
For the full report from Nerdwallet, see here.
For the entire list of average city premium, see here.
Image Credit: Flickr User david-berliner, https://flic.kr/p/9pR23h via (CC BY-NC 2.0)