Can you buy indemnity insurance or do you have to do it through your solicitor?

papermoney

As title really.

I was wondering if I could get my own qoute.

Richard_Webster

You might be able to but it could be more expensive!

Many solicitors either have an online facility that they have signed up to, or have looseleaf books of policies/cover notes that they can issue provided certain criteria are met. They then fill in the forms and send copies to the insurance company with a cheque.

A lot of the cost with these policies is the admin in setting them up, because in general terms, it is rare for them to have to pay out. Therefore if they have to spend time talking to a lay person on the phone about the matter your quote might not be so cheap!

What kind of cover is it? What's the value of the property? Has your solicitor already given you a figure?


As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients.

adr0ck

papermoney

unfortuantly these are just another way of a solicitor ripping you off

theres no simple way to check the prices unfortuantly

Richard_Webster

adr0ck wrote: »

papermoney

unfortuantly these are just another way of a solicitor ripping you off

theres no simple way to check the prices unfortuantly

I don't know any solicitors who get any commission from these policies. Sometimes you may wonder why we bother and there certainly are some cases where I wonder why other solicitors bother - but it is all about blame culture.

Mortgage lenders want every angle covered and their bureaucracy is such that we can't get them to take a view about small unlikely risks. People who are selling property get cross with their solicitors because they are being asked to pay for a policy to cover some point and their solcitor didn't get one for them when they bought. Some of this is changing goalposts that we can't do anything about.

I have to spend time writing paragraphs in pre-contract reports for buyer clients explaining why a policy might be needed, and even if I don't think one is not really needed in their case, then pointing out I can't guarantee a future buyer's solicitor will take the same view!

One thing I would tell you. Most of these policies are priced in £50,000 bands, so I always quote a cover amount required at the top of a band so that I get the maximum cover for the client (or for that matter for his buyer) the same price, so it is worth making sure that you get this if you can, because that might save you money if you sell within the same price band in a year or two's time because otherwise you would have to pay to top the policy up.

For instance I acted for somone recently who sold a house for £175,000. He had bought it a year or two before for £165,000 and a policy was needed which cost £160. The seller evidently paid for that but they only put £165,000 on as the insured amount. We had to pay £50 for an upgrade yet my client's seller could have given a policy for £200,000 cover to start with for no extra cost.

There's another bit of lender bureaucracy - they want the cover to be for the full market value of the property in nearly all cases - yet if you have a house worth £200K and someone adds a conservatory which costs £15,000 to erect and it say adds that amount to the value, if built in breach of a restrictive covenant then a policy for the full £215,000 would be needed if the owner was selling.

OK, I know if the covenant holder showed up, the cost of fighting the case and if unsuccessful, reinstating the property to its former condition and covering the loss in value might be a bit more than £15K but nowhere near £215K. Trouble is that most clients would get fed up at the delay if we tried to get a lender to agree that they would only need say £50,000 worth of cover for that. The lenders simply don't have the staff able to make that kind of decision - they refer us back to the rule book or it goes all through their internal system for weeks and weeks and then we get a silly answer. So the average client says he prefers to get on with things and if a policy will help that then so be it.

So things would be helped a lot and we wouln't have to mess around with these policies if the lenders would tell us that we are not required to bother with them in a lot of the more unlikely situations.

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients.

papermoney

Thanks, I have contacted the solicitor as the council have told me they have no interest in the conservatory as it was built over 4 years ago.

They also wanted me to pay for indemnity because 3 years ago (possibly more) the tiles on the roof were changed. _ I have questioned this as well.