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Renewing home insurance then moving to rented

Hi

I was just hoping for some advice. My home insurance (buildings and contents) is due for renewal on 24th Jan. We are selling our house and are due to move into rented accomodation at the end of Feb/beginning of March.

I just did a price comparision to check my renewal quote and it is still the cheapest so I called them to find out my options. Obviously I have to ensure this house until completion but then I'll only need contents on the rental property.

It all got a bit confusing then as our current insurer doesn't do contents only policies so I couldn't just call and change over when we rent. He checked prices for the same cover with other companies who do offer contents only and it was much more expensive (over £100 more). He said that as I will only be here for another 4-5 weeks it worked out cheaper to renew and then cancel when we moved into rented. The other issue is if we take out contents cover for 6 months (can we just do 6 or must it be 12?) while we rent he said we will lose all our no claims on the buildings & contents policy.

I have renewed with them and plan to cancel when we move (think we'll lose about £45 doing this which was far less than the other quotes). Have I done the right thing? I'm starting to think i should have found a renewal price that I could have changed to contents only with. But all other quotes were much much higher so no guarantee I would have saved in the long run.

I can cancel this policy within 14 days if I've done totally the wrong thing!

Really don't want to lose all out no claims. Will this mean our house insurance when we do buy a new house will be huge?

Thanks

Comments

  • No claims discount on Home insurance is much less standardised than it is in Motor. Many home insurers dont even use a concept of NCD. To say unilaterally that you would lose your NCD I think was wrong but it may well be that with your current provider you would lose it because of their rules. The only bit that is unilateral is you will not accrue NCD by having multiple short term policies even if they add up to a year in total.

    How different insurers handle Contents & Buildings insurance also varies, with some they are a single policy and you may or may not be able to add/cancel one part mid year, with others they are actually two separate policies and so you can cancel one and you can buy the other (but by doing the later you may then get out of sync with renewal dates).

    A significant proportion of people change cars and car insurance etc every year and mid term so the policies need to be flexible. Despite the effort of direct insurers and the aggregators the Home market is much more static with many people being in the same home with the same insurers for a decade or more and so the need for home insurers to be more flexible hasnt really existed to invest in the technology to support it.
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