New contents insurance - confused about joint policy

ScarletBea

Me and my girlfriend are going to rent a flat together, and for that we need contents insurance.

I got a quote from a specific tenants insurance which doesn't require any specific information, but I wanted to run the quotation services of moneysupermarket, confused.com and the others, as advised in Martin's article, for general contents insurance.

One doesn't recognise the postcode (it's a building from December 2006)... I've already contacted the RoyalMail postcode service about it.

The others ask about who lives there, who needs to be covered, and so on, and now I'm confused, because we're not married/civil partnered, and I wouldn't exactly call it a 'common law marriage' either (as I saw in one option).
But her things should be added as well, but then it starts asking about the joint applicant and I don't know what to write.

Shall I just ignore that and then say that eevrything was mine, in the event of a claim?

Or just ignore the other options and go with the Homelet one, one year costs £107 for a cover of £5000?
Are the others any cheaper?

jonesMUFCforever

Sorry I can't really advise about your position joint, married etc but I would really ask you to re consider whether £5000 is sufficent even for a small flat.

Even the things you may not own such as carpets, furniture etc still need to be insured in case of say a fire.I'm sure your landlord would have this as a term in a tenancy agreement.
If it is a local authority council flat I would not touch their own insurance with a bargepole.

morg_monster

I would have thought that a landlord ought to insure his own belongings/property? This is certainly what happens in our privately rented furnished flat. We just insure our own belongings.
It wouldn't seem very fair otherwise - we've got some really nice furniture in our flat thanks to our landlord, but if we had to insure it, i'd much rather have a house full of cheap ikea stuff!!

ScarletBea

We're renting it unfurnished.

And honestly, the 'cheap ikea stuff' is really nice, you know? And lasts a long long time as well, I speak from experience.

Thanks anyway, I'll check further.

kingkano

Dont forget that joint cover will also apply to the 'outside the home' risks. IE jewellery, mobile phones, shopping stolen etc. If she isnt listed she wont be insured for these things.

£107/5k sounds alot to me. we have £40k cover on our 2bed flat for about £150. Think carefully about the NEW replacement cost of your possessions not just what you think they are worth. And never UNDER insure. If they decide you have under insured when you come to make any claim, they will REDUCE the claim by the same percentage....

ScarletBea

I've managed to search more, now with 7.5k coverage, and the £120 from Homelet is the cheapest.
I think the problems are the renting/owning and not having been in england for long...

olly300

ScarletBea insurance is slightly higher if you are renting that if you are an owner. (I've recently become an owner.)

I also agree with kingkano even if you are renting and the landlord owns most of the furniture you should get more insurance it doesn't actually add on that much to your quote.

I found the difference between getting £40K worth of insurance and £15K worth of insurance was something like £5 but the £40K insurance allowed me a £1k higher limit for personal processions i.e. 2.5K rather than 1K and didn't have such strict security requirements.

Insurance companies are unlikely to pay out if you don't put her details down because as part of the contract between you and them you have agreed to give them as much information as possible. So you need to put down she lives in the property and need to get a list from her (ask her to write it down) of items that she has worth over £150 this includes cameras, MP3 players, jewellery, handbags, cd collections, laptops.

You are either cohabiting or she is just a joint applicant.

Common law marriage doesn't exist in this country in any legal form so it's puzzling why an insurance company would put that down. (http://www.advicenow.org.uk/livingtogether)

morg_monster

ScarletBea - I really didn't mean anything by my comment!! I wasn't insulting Ikea - I lurve that shop - what I meant was that if it was MY choice and i had to furnish the place then I would go to ikea - there's no way we could afford the nicer stuff which our landlord provides. Even if we could afford it, I'd much rather spend less on furniture and more on more fun things!!

(Incidentally I think most of the stuff in our flat is actually Ikea, but he just got the most expensive of everything instead of the cheapest which is always where I look!)

really didn't mean to get your back up !!

ScarletBea

Oh I wasn't angry, hehehe, it's just that I've had my share of people speaking badly of Ikea. My parents were actually very much impressed with my furniture when they came to visit

I have the nice expensive things in my own flat in portugal, but abroad, when renting, I get nice mid range Ikea things