Insurance company queries re "distance from nearest watercourse"

moneyistooshorttomention

When insurance companies ask how far a property is "from the nearest watercourse" and a property is partially in one "band" and partially in another "band" as regards falling within their "distance bands eg within 200 metres, within 400 metres - how do they judge which band yours falls in?

Do they go by "any part of your property being within the nearer band - even if its just a smidgen of the garden falling within the nearer to water course banding"? Or do they say "Well - part of the house falls within the next band up (ie further from watercourse)?

My feeling would be that if even a smidgen of a propertys garden fell within the nearer band then they would judge the whole house as being within the nearer-to-watercourse banding - rather than saying "Well a little bit of the garden is nearer to the watercourse - but the house itself is that bit further away from that watercourse and falls in next band up" iyswim.

How do they judge on half-and-half properties like that as to which band they are in?

HouseBuyer77

I wouldn't be surprised is companies differ on this, I'd phone them and ask.

From a pragmatic point of view they care about the building flooding, so I would have thought any part of the building being closer than 400m could cause them a problem.

ReadingTim

The cynic in me suggests that should you ever have to make a claim, the insurance company may look for every excuse not to pay, so if you'd selected the 400m band and a part of the property falls within the 200m band, they might use that against you....

Accordingly, I'd err on the side of caution, even if it costs a little more.

That said, there are usually explanation boxes around each question, which define what they mean by "property" for example whether they mean all of the land you own, plus any buildings in it, or whether they mean simply the building/structure.

davidmcn

HouseBuyer77 wrote: »

From a pragmatic point of view they care about the building flooding, so I would have thought any part of the building being closer than 400m could cause them a problem.

They're not always particularly pragmatic - I had one insurer reject cover for a property which was about 50m above the watercourse they were concerned about.

chris_m

davidmcn wrote: »

They're not always particularly pragmatic - I had one insurer reject cover for a property which was about 50m above the watercourse they were concerned about.

Hehe, reminds me about when I changed insurance. The question came up so I dug out my large scale OS maps and attempted to count the contour lines. I told the broker that it was pretty close but that I may be 10m out because contour lines aren't always clear when overlaid with roads, etc.
His response was "Well, I know where your address is and I doubt you'll have any problem. If your place gets flooded so will about 90% of the rest of Southampton and the surrounding area."
:rotfl: