House Insurance and a Granny Flat

a&akay

We bought a house and extended it for a granny flat for mother-in law. It has a lounge, bedroom and bathroom. The currently shared kitchen is large eough for a kitchen/dining room for her and the adjacent separate dining room is big enough to be a kitchen/dining room too for our use. If we converted this would we have to declare as 2 properties for house insurance?

dacouch

It depends on the Insurer.

Will the granny flat have it's own address eg will it share your postal address or will it have it's own address eg you add say "A" to your house number.

Will it share your front door

a&akay

Same address. I pay all the utility bills and give her her mail. My insurance smallprint with Halifax only mentions declaring the number of bedrooms and I've scanned them for anything on my situation without result. However when and if the loss adjuster ever has to come they may try to deny the insurance. I suppose I'm asking the specialist question has the ombudsman ever ruled on such a situation. Long shot I know.

dacouch

You really need to speak to your Insurers ti find out.

Halifax have a lot of unusual small print in their policies. Pay particular attention to the section of the policy that gives definition of certain words especially how they describe the "Home"

It may be a case of you need to separate the Building and Contents so that your MIL becomes a joint policyholder on the contents.

You may also need to inform your Insurers whilst the building work is being carried out.

System

In a similar position, our old (detached) cottage ranked as an outbuilding for insurance purposes, so was included in the house policy. When my mother moved in I asked the company, RIAS, for advice, and they said it now needed separate insurance, as it was being used independently.
Asked if they could therefore arrange insurance, they said it needed landlord insurance, which they don't do
So I therefore took out separate landlord insurance with a different company.

inoutnotsure

If the building is an extension to your main property and attached, then you may be able to argue it's the same property. If it is separate, then it could be classed as an outhouse, but because it is habitable space, it could be classed as a house.

Think if it from an insurance point of view, they would class it as 2 building with 2 similar risks. It is more than likely they would want more money from you because of this.