How much should I insure my home for?

gerturdeanna

Hi I've just got my renewal quote through from Liverpool and Victoria for £243.53, Buildings contents is £500,000 and contents is £125,000.

We only live in a 2-bed 1900 terraced..surely it wouldn't cost £500,000 to rebuild the house?!!?!??!

How much should I be looking for realistically?

raskazz

gerturdeanna wrote: »

Hi I've just got my renewal quote through from Liverpool and Victoria for £243.53, Buildings contents is £500,000 and contents is £125,000.

We only live in a 2-bed 1900 terraced..surely it wouldn't cost £500,000 to rebuild the house?!!?!??!

How much should I be looking for realistically?

Try this useful calculator provided by the ABI as a starting point:

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

(bottom of the page)

ginger_nuts

i was told by an insurance broker to insure the buildings for 2/3 off the market value .
I actually insured with tesco for £1,000,000 .My house is worth £200,000

It cost me £118 for building & contents with Tesco

gazza975526570

It may just be a blanke policy which lots of insurers use these days.

If so they will insure all for the same amounts.

Where i work all the buildings policies are £1,000,000.

Burnley_Lad

gerturdeanna wrote: »

Hi I've just got my renewal quote through from Liverpool and Victoria for £243.53, Buildings contents is £500,000 and contents is £125,000.

We only live in a 2-bed 1900 terraced..surely it wouldn't cost £500,000 to rebuild the house?!!?!??!

How much should I be looking for realistically?

while it still won't come to £500,000, you need to consider potential damage to your next door neighbours' houses, especially if you live in a mid-terraced property.

£125,000 for contents seems quite a lot too - mine's covered for £50,000 and more than enuogh.

justmarried06

As gazza said most insurers these days operate on a blanket sum insured basis which just means that they will cover up to that maximum limit. Because this is the way they write their policies it won't have any impact on your rates for this part of your cover. However, £125,000 is a massive sum insured for contents and this will be potentially having an impact on your premiums. As Burnley_Lad said, £50k is usually sufficient for most people (I think we have £30k on ours) and then also don't forget to check what the maximum sum insured per individual item is as you may want to add things for a higher limit (like laptops, jewellery etc - we also covers our pushbikes separately too).

HTH

JMx

FlameCloud

You need to be careful of undervalueing it as well, alot of other cover is related to a % of the sum insured (Alternative accomadtion and liabilty the two main things)

mattymoo

FlameCloud wrote: »

You need to be careful of undervalueing it as well, alot of other cover is related to a % of the sum insured (Alternative accomadtion and liabilty the two main things)

You sure about the liability cover being linked? AFAIK it is always a set indemnity limit, typically £2m or £5m depending on insurer. Agree that accomodation costs are often linked though.

mattymoo

Burnley_Lad wrote: »

while it still won't come to £500,000, you need to consider potential damage to your next door neighbours' houses, especially if you live in a mid-terraced property.

£125,000 for contents seems quite a lot too - mine's covered for £50,000 and more than enuogh.

You do not need to worry about rebuilding cost of neighbouring properties, that is for your neighbour to worry about. If your property does damage the neighbours as a result of your negligence, the liability section of the policy will pick this up and the limit there is normally at least £2m.

Adrian_london

As far as i'm aware, the cost of rebuilding your home is NOTHING to do with the value of your home.

My home's rebuild cost is approximately £105k (or so the surveyor's report states)

The market vlaue is a lot more than that.

mattymoo

Adrian_london wrote: »

As far as i'm aware, the cost of rebuilding your home is NOTHING to do with the value of your home.

My home's rebuild cost is approximately £105k (or so the surveyor's report states)

The market vlaue is a lot more than that.

Correct - there is no correlation between the two.

A 2 bed terraced house near Newcastle could be bought for around £70k yet cost £100k to rebuild.

The same house in london could be cost £120k to rebuild (higher labour cost) but be worth £250k or more.