house v bungalow insurance

cheshirecat68

Hi
I have just renewed my building and contents insurance. I have recently moved from a house to a bungalow and the quote was for a house.
The quote went up by about a third by correcting it to a bungalow. Nothing else changed for the quote.
I am happy with the quote that is not the issue. Just why is insurance so much more for a bungalow than a house - I would have thought it would be less.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts

forgotmyname

Have you done quotes on all the comparison websites? Do they all class a bungalow as a higher risk?

cheshirecat68

I persuaded them to keep the premium the same as they couldn't tell me why it was so much more! but they told me it was normal practice

dacouch

Bigger theft risk and also the owners tend to have higher value contents.

I believe there's also a considerable extra cost for large claims involving the roof

agrinnall

And of course the bungalow is not in precisely the same location as the house. The only way to get an exact comparison would be to knock down the house and build a bungalow on the site.

jem16

agrinnall wrote: »

And of course the bungalow is not in precisely the same location as the house.

I got the impression that the OP had got a quote for his new property but had mistakenly put house instead of bungalow into the details. When it was noticed the house was changed to bungalow and the quote went up.

So yes the bungalow was in exactly the same location as the house.

InsideInsurance

If you are playing with the quote that can also cause a loading to be applied, though normally a single change wont impact things.

Insurance works on stats, it would appear from what you are saying that insurers experience higher average claims costs per year for a bungalow than a house. Rarely will they interrogate the reason why this is but just accept the fact and price accordingly.

Certainly flood is a bigger issue in bungalows as everything is on the ground floor where as in a house half tends to be out of flood water height. It could be those who live in bungalows have a higher tendency to claim for minor incidents whereas those in houses are more likely to have kids and so a new carpet stain just matches all the others and so dont claim.

agrinnall

jem16 wrote: »

I got the impression that the OP had got a quote for his new property but had mistakenly put house instead of bungalow into the details. When it was noticed the house was changed to bungalow and the quote went up.

So yes the bungalow was in exactly the same location as the house.

On re-reading I think you are right. So the house never existed (cheap to insure though ).