Renewing house insurance- questions !

blackcoffee

When I first stumbled across this website, (under different I.D) I changed our house insurance, we were with Direct Line and had been for about 8 years, it had crept up to over £50 a month.

We moved to more than, and are about to renew for the third time, Ive shopped around and they have come back the cheapest, but we have hit a monthly premium of £47.80. for buildings & contents (that just seems to be getting steeper and i guess next year will will hit £50)

We live in a 6 bedhouse (thanks to loft conversion) and have seperate items listed on our home insurance policy (under personnal belongings adding to £8k, my engagement ring, my husbands racing bike and 2 items of furniture)

with rebuild at 500k (thats more thans policy not us) and contents at £75k. we also include freezer contents, family bikes, personnal money and credit cards in our policy)

Our home is worth approc £320k.

Ive done a compare than website and a few companies have declined as we have to many bedrooms. Is what we are paying about right,or is that excessive ? sorry to be a bit dim!

blackcoffee

thanks for reading anycase !

geri1965_2

If all the price comparison websites are coming up with similar figures, I guess that's the market price for your risk.

dogbot

Try getting a quote from Hiscox and Home and Legacy. They are a high net worth insurer and broker respectively. With the relatively large number of listed items and personal posessions you might find that, given the much, much higher standard of cover they offer, they won't be that much more expensive. They are also much happy to deal with larger homes.

How much your home is worth is nothing to do with your home insurance - only the rebuilding value is relevant. For a 6 bed house, I would have a quick check to make sure the standard More Than limit is sufficient to cover your needs.

tfspark

Good advice from Dogbot as you are insuring a higher value property and contents.

I have been with Lloyds/TSB for years and have just (stupidly) accepted their new premium at renewal.
It has also crept up to £609 pounds a year for a fairly unremarkable three bed semi with nothing of high value (that needs to be declared).
I spoke to Lloyds yesterday who claimed "you get what you pay for". He could'nt convince me that I needed to pay them twice anybody else.

I am swapping my building/contents insurance today to a Direct Line Plus policy.
It costs £238 a year and seems at least equivalent.

dacouch

The DL plus policy is not that bad a policy and I think includes free travel at the moment along with Legal and Emerency Cover. Looking at the prices they are charging I suspect they have priced it low to get customers in as for the cover you get it should cost a bit more

blackcoffee

dogbot wrote: »

Try getting a quote from Hiscox and Home and Legacy. They are a high net worth insurer and broker respectively. With the relatively large number of listed items and personal posessions you might find that, given the much, much higher standard of cover they offer, they won't be that much more expensive. They are also much happy to deal with larger homes.

How much your home is worth is nothing to do with your home insurance - only the rebuilding value is relevant. For a 6 bed house, I would have a quick check to make sure the standard More Than limit is sufficient to cover your needs.

thanks Dogbot, i didnt think the market value had anything to do with rebuild value, but market value was asked on the website comparison site so I wrote it down here,to get a better range of answers. Likewise i am sure our house would not cost £500k to rebuild however that is standard with the policy.


what do you mean when you say "the standard more than limit?"

Thanks again for replying. I was pondering going and asking my neighbours who they use and what they pay, but thought that a tad nosey ! lol! I was complaining to next door about our water (we pay £46.53, he pays £90 on a meter as he thought a meter would be cheaper, :money: he is fuming )

dacouch

What Dogbot means is that the Morethan policy is designed for average homes with average amounts of contents.

You are in the fortunate position to have a large home and fall into what we term as a Mid Net or High Net Home. Basically you need above average levels of cover, have different cover needs eg your expensive engagement ring and often are prepared to pay extra to get exceptional service (Hence why he recommended Hiscox).

The More Than Policy has a low amount of cover for "High Risk / Valuables" HIGH VALUE AND HIGH RISK ITEMS
Possessions such as your television, jewellery or
computers are insured for a total value of £7,500.
You can increase this limit if you wish.

dogbot

Indeed DA.

More than offer a "limit of indemnity" policy rather than the traditional sum insured policy. That means they offer a blanket limit of indemnity to all policyholders. They then have an bit of software that takes bits of informaiton submitted to calculate a likley sum insured for your property and price according to that likley sum insured.

This offers a bit of extra reassurance and protection against under insurance to most customers. It sounds like you are on the border line of these limits and, as DA points out, some of the inner limits too.

Hiscox are a specialist insurer for those with larger sums insured, the mid and high net worth individuals. Home and Legacy are a broker that offer bespoke policies for the same type of client. There are a few others out there. I would certainly urge you to get a couple of quotes from those two. The level of service and cover will be much higher than you will get from More Than. The excess will be higher than most standard policies though, but this keeps the price for this excellent service down.

You might also benifit from talking to a local broker, as there are some policies availible via a brokers that offer the kind of "standard" levels of service and areas of cover you get with More Than but for higher sums insured - things from AXA, Allianz, Brit, Sterling and some more.

blackcoffee

thankyou so much.:beer:

missile

I just signed up for Direct Line their home insurance Plus policy gives a whole heap of extras. In your case the £3000 limit on valuable items may mean there is no need to declare the ring and bike? Please note, furniture is not normaly declared as personal.

You might want to pay policy as a lump sum. Monthly payment plan is usually more expensive.