Home insurance - How I find out how many bedrooms?

dacouch

rs65 wrote: »

Do they care?

Some of the bedroom rated products only offer cover for homes upto five bedrooms.

With a company with a reputation for voiding policies for under insurance on contents such as Esure would you want to risk it with them. They offer £1m blanket cover and have this defintion of what is a bedroom. They will offer cover on a five bedroom house but not on a six bedroom house. This would give them the option to void the policy especially if they had a record of the OP asking for a quote on a 6 bedroom and then a 5 bedroom

"Bedroom
A room used as, or originally built to be, a bedroom, even if currently used for another purpose."

rs65

Whooooosh

Check your typo.

dacouch

rs65 wrote: »

Whooooosh

Check your typo.

I must have been reading this thread before https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5155508

clever_duck

Still confused lol.

Because it was sold to us as a 5 bedroom house.

Can I ask anyone/council/etc for the definitive answer?

If I call a potential insurer, their sales advisor will most definitely say you'll have to get 6 bedroom cover cause its easier for them to say that, and most probably wont have a clue and/or wont care.

dacouch

clever_duck wrote: »

Still confused lol.

Because it was sold to us as a 5 bedroom house.

Can I ask anyone/council/etc for the definitive answer?

If I call a potential insurer, their sales advisor will most definitely say you'll have to get 6 bedroom cover cause its easier for them to say that, and most probably wont have a clue and/or wont care.

You need to check the Insurers definition of a bedroom, if it says to the effect "We define the amount of bedrooms as how many bedrooms the property was sold to you as" then you're ok declaring 5 bedrooms. If it says along the lines of "A room used as or originally designed and built to be a Bedroom even if now used for another purpose." (Which most companies will use) then from what you've described eg you use it as a study but may use it as a guest bedroom in future. Then you have six bedrooms.

If you speak to an Insurer and describe your situation to which their member of staff confirms that they would class it as five bedrooms. Then you are ok declaring 5 bedrooms with that Insurer. You will need to make a note of the time, date and the persons name should there be a query in the future.

There will be the odd Insurer who will accept it being five bedrooms as you purchased it as such. But you need their confirmation to be on the safe side.

The quotes you've obtained on five and six bedrooms will be recorded by most Insurers. They may refer back to these at a later date if you take out cover as a five bedroom and there's a query as this could be taken to imply you were aware it's a six bedroom and tried to deceive them

clever_duck

Aah I see.

In that case I may just go with 6 and then there's no hassle. If there's the price difference is a lot I may look into which companies will accept it as 5 bedrooms and seeing what the price difference is with them.

I've not yet got a quote for this as a 6 bedroom house yet.

dacouch

The advice about how many bedrooms the house is sold as is a fairly good informal rule. It works quite well for a normal house with three or four bedrooms.

Your problem would be if you had declared five bedrooms but selected an Insurer who will not accept six bedrooms. Had the discovered the error they could decline any claims.

There are plenty of Insurers who don't use the amount of bedrooms as a rating factor and plenty who accept six bedrooms.

You're likely to pay more than you would for a five bed house as the insurers tend to offer a blanket cover of say £1m and then use the amount of bedrooms as one way of working out the size of the house and thus the risk to them of a claim.

One thing to be careful with when you're buying contents cover is that Insurers tend to impose an overall total limit on what they define as "Valuables" or "High Risk" items. These tend to be the items a thief would target as being easy to sell on eg Jewellery, Camera Equipment etc (Some insurers will include TV and Computers so check the Insurers definition).

Some Insurers will impose an overall limit on valuables that is relatively low. With a six bedroom house I would assume you have more contents and more Valuables / High Risk items than a normal home. So it would be sensible to ensure the overall limit they offer is sufficient to replace all of the items they define as High Risk / Valuables at their new cost. Bear in mind that gold values are on the up again due to the Oil and Currency problems we're currently experiencing

System

dacouch wrote: »

small potential of the Insurer discovering you have sex bedrooms .

Interesting how they might find out what you were using them for.