Building Insurance for 2 flats

arturski

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I bought a flat last year in a converted terraced house. We own the ground floor flat and garden and there is another owner for the upstairs flat who rents it out. We are both 50% freeholders and have our own insurance policies.

Recently I found out that with the current arrangement there are parts of the building that are not covered by either of our insurance companies, which are the common areas such as the roof, front entrance etc. I have spoken with the landlady and she confirmed that here and the previous owners of our flat had to fork out a decent amount of money to fiz a hole in the roof because insurance wouldn't cover it.

I am currently insured by MoreThan and called them up to see if there is an arrangement or policy available for us to cover the whole building but they told me that they have no such policies available.

Does anybody know any decent insurance companies that would cover something like this? surely there must be plenty of other people out there in a similar situation.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Regards
Arthur

kingstreet

If two of you are freeholders who is the landlady of which you speak?

When you own a leasehold flat, you normally describe the freeholder as the landlord and you as the leaseholder.

Normally, the building is freehold, so the owner of the freehold insures the building, with the leaseholders paying the premiums via their service charges.

The leaseholders then insure the contents of their respective properties themselves.

Please confirm if you own only a leasehold property, or if you also wholly or jointly own the freehold to the building as well as a leasehold flat.

Spikey1

This sounds like a misunderstanding to me.


When the landlady (ie. owner) from upstairs told you that the Insurer would not pay for the hole in the roof that might have been because the hole was not caused by an insured peril (storm etc.)and was a maintenance issue...that's my guess anyway.


I'm sure that either her policy or your policy (or perhaps both) will indeed include the roof and communal parts. Your deeds will confirm which of the flats these parts are demised to. They will form part of that flat and respective owner's insurance will be the one which covers it. It may even be shared on a 50/50 basis....the deeds will clarify.


If you can post a bit more info after you've checked the deeds the posters here may be able to help you further.

arturski

Thank you for the replies and apologies for being unclear, the owner of the upstairs flat is renting it out which is why I referred to her as the landlady. We are both 50% freeholders of the whole building.

I will have a look at the deed today and reply back with the details regarding the territories.

slowlysurely

I have a similar issue to this. A remortgage valuation report I have just received states that it assumes the building as a whole is insured under a single policy. But my lease states that each flat is responsible for its own buildings insurance (2 flats in a converted house). And this is how it was when I bought the place. I am just worried that this is going to be a problem as the remortgage process continues.
The other flat is let out and if I wouldn't mind paying for whole of house building insurance if you can do that, just to make the remortgage run smoothly and quickly. And to save me having to find a landlord/owner of the other flat who I have never even seen before.
Is it possible for 1 flat owner to get whole of building insurance? Could I get my existing policy modified for this? As it is , it states unlimited rebuilding costs are included