Buildings insurance question

junglist_matty

Hi all,

Last year we bought our first house in a nice quiet little village, the house was built in the 1850s and is a small 2 bed terrace.

The cheapest house insurance quote I can find is £560, last year we paid the same price for our premium, but it seems really high to me.

The reason it's high is because back in 1998 the terrace suffered a flood from the river that is 1 mile away. However, after the damage from that flood, the council spent millions putting in flood defences to protect the surrounding area.
Now going by the super wet year we suffered last year, the flood defences clearly worked as the river spent months with burst banks and even with continued rain fall there was no flooding of the property. The flood defences stood up well; we wouldn't have bought the house as we know the area and know the defences work.


Now annoyingly, about 3 years ago, a new estate of houses were built (less than 100m from our house) on ground that also flooded when our property flooded back in 1998. However, because these are brand new, they have no flood history and can get insured under the normal policies that are over £400 cheaper than ours!


Is there anything we can do to reduce the price? it's a tiny 2bed (2up 2down) house. The market value is £155,000 (what we paid 12 months ago).

dougiem55

I dont think you can from what i've heard, I'm surprised the new ones are even getting away with it, though am sure it wont be long as you mentioned that area did flood before so will do so again, you'll be back oin a even keel with them then, though i know its not much consolation.
D

trailingspouse

When I was getting quotes for house insurance, they asked if the property had flooded in the last 5 years (a reasonable question, as we live near Hebden Bridge...) - so I'm surprised that they're interested in something that happened in 1998. Keep looking for quotes - don't just use the comparison sites, look at the direct companies too.

junglist_matty

dougiem55 wrote: »

I dont think you can from what i've heard, I'm surprised the new ones are even getting away with it, though am sure it wont be long as you mentioned that area did flood before so will do so again, you'll be back oin a even keel with them then, though i know its not much consolation.
D

Considering the amount of rain we had last year it would take a hell of a lot for the flood defences to fail, they are built to survive a 2m flood depth, last year the local river came up to about 1.5m which is well above the amount when it flooded in 1998...



http://st-ives.info/history/Floods/


Flooding in November last year (flooded worse than this in June/July)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laIxVlb15xM

At 1min 26s in this video, that big floodplain (field) is right behind our house so the defences did their job (thankfully!!!)

ACG

The company we use for insurance have overturned decisions like yours before.

We had a client who lived in a house that was at the top of a hill, the houses at the bottom had flooded and he was being penalised. He took a photo of the hill showing his house in comparison to the others. The underwriters also looked at google maps.

They overturned the decision and gave him normal rates.