Buildings Insurance

toontastic

I'm wanting to organise Buildings and contents insurance for my house. I've managed to find it for £17 a month with £80 cash back which would be very nice however the problem is I don't know when to start it from because there is no completion date. Can I start the insurance before I move into the house ?

dexters_mum_2

Most insurers will give you a quote vald for a set period, say 12weeks and will honour any incentives and price at th time of your quote, worth seeing if this is the case with yours.

danm

I always thought that buildings insurance should be in effect from exchange date

virgo149

We were recently going to move and the Nationwide were giving us insurance from exchange but we would only start paying on completion (so getting x amount of weeks free).

toontastic

I got in touch with Zurich and they were happy to do this they just said to give them a call to change the policy date when I get my completion date. So that's all good news £80 to quidco and a pretty low insurance, things are coming along nicely today.

Debt_Free_Chick

toontastic wrote:

I'm wanting to organise Buildings and contents insurance for my house. I've managed to find it for £17 a month with £80 cash back which would be very nice however the problem is I don't know when to start it from because there is no completion date. Can I start the insurance before I move into the house ?

It's a difficult one. Firstly, once you exchange you are legally obliged to complete on the purchase, irrespective of the state of the building. So, if you exchanged and the property was burnt to the ground, you would still be buying a burned out shell. If you have insurance, this ought not to be a problem, as your insurer would simply pay to restore to the property to one that is inhabitable, as it was when you exchanged.

However, the contract of the sale might place certain obligations on the seller, in this situation. So the seller might be obliged to claim on his insurance and complete on a property that is in the same state as it were, when you exchanged. That depends on what is in the contract.

To be on the safe side, you want your buildings insurance to be "on risk" from the date of exchange. As others have said - if you get a quotation, then you often get x days to place the insurance "on risk". So you would get a quote and, provided you exchanged within the x days, you would simply call up the insurer and confirm that they will put the policy "on risk" (On risk means that the policy is in full force).

Ideally, put the policy on risk from the date of exchange. Between now & then, simply get the insurer to extend the expiry date of the quotation, so that you have a quote that encompasses the date of exchange.

HTH - post back if I've not been clear

toontastic

All sounds good to me. I've exchanging and completing on the same day so hopefully I shouldn't have too many problems in terms of the insurance. I will get in touch with Zurich once the date has been confirmed and then I'll change my policy date.

worrypants

unless its a new build then insurance only required from completion date and not exchange.

Insurance should be covered by builders as if house not built there is nowt to insure