Detached Bungalow - Help!

albionrovers

Hi folks

I've just cancelled my Direct Line home+contents for 70/month. I asked the rep to reduce my £1M cover and he said he couldn't, that was standard for a detached bungalow. I don't even need half of that.

Anyone had similar treatment? Who should I switch to?

Thanks in advance.

Simulacraton

When you say £1M I presume you mean buildings sums insured?

Sounds like a blanket policy to me. This means you can have a rebuild value of up to that value. It does not mean your bungalow would be that much to rebuild.

albionrovers

Aviva just came back with >1K online eek! What is going on here?

Simulacraton

There are many Insurers with different rating styles. Without seeing details it's impossible to speculate why it may be so high. Typical reasons are claims and claims in progress, high risk post codes for theft/flood, high levels of contents cover and personal possessions with accidental damage cover. Some are rated on the number of bedrooms, so if you have 5+ bedrooms you may get high quotes. Not all rate by number of bedrooms though. These will generally be policies that ask you for an approximate rebuild value, rather than the blanket cover of the policy you just cancelled.

Try a comparison site.

Lovelyjoolz

My detached, 4 bed bungalow has buildings cover for £140k because that is what it would cost to rebuild it.

Shop around on the meerkat site and find someone who offers cover more relevant to you.

dacouch

Lovelyjoolz wrote: »

My detached, 4 bed bungalow has buildings cover for £140k because that is what it would cost to rebuild it.

Shop around on the meerkat site and find someone who offers cover more relevant to you.

That's sounds low for a 4 bed bungalow

kingstreet

Either use a bedroom-rated policy with a flat sum insured, £300k, £500k, unlimited , or calculate the rebuild cost using the ABI calculator;-

http://abi.bcis.co.uk/

Do not under insure. Do not attempt to use the property purchase price or value as the rebuild cost. Neither will be accurate.

Lovelyjoolz

dacouch wrote: »

That's sounds low for a 4 bed bungalow

It's not. It wouldn't cost anywhere near that to rebuild my house.

Linton

albionrovers wrote: »

Hi folks

I've just cancelled my Direct Line home+contents for 70/month. I asked the rep to reduce my £1M cover and he said he couldn't, that was standard for a detached bungalow. I don't even need half of that.

Anyone had similar treatment? Who should I switch to?

Thanks in advance.

Would it have been any cheaper if the cover was reduced? I would guess that given that any valuable item of contents must be explicitly identified the contents risk to the insurance company is limited by the amount you could physically fit in the bungalow. On the building costs there are standard values for a rebuild given the size/type of the building. So worrying about the max cover isnt worth the insurance company's administration costs. They just state a value which is more than enough to cover everything.

pelirocco

We have a 5 bed detatched bungalow , not sure of exact figure we have for rebuild , but know its no where near a million

kingstreet

The property isn't actually insured for £1 million.

This is bedroom-rated cover where instead of working to an actual sum insured, the insurer simply gives "upto £1m" to ensure just about every possible eventuality will be covered.

All you do is compare other bedroom-rated policies to ensure the premiums aren't too high for the maximum amount you need.

For example, mine has a blanket level of £300k and it's cheaper this way than using the actual rebuild cost as the sum insured for that type of cover.

You just have to make sure you compare like with like. As I mentioned earlier, use the ABI rebuild cost calculator if you want to do it the other way and cover all the possibles.