Buildings insurance with share of freehold

arciere

I own a first-floor converted flat with my wife, which we recently purchased with a new lease of 999 years and a share of the freehold (50%, the other half is with the owners of the ground floor flat).
It took us a while to find a suitable insurance company willing to insure the block of flats (the other owners bought their flat at the same time), so the options we had were quite limited.
My question is: is there any way I can get a 'normal' buildings insurance just for our flat that also covers the whole building? What I mean is that if, for example, the ground floor flat has subsidence problems, obviously also my flat will be affected. Would a normal buildings insurance cover that as well or would it be up to the other owner to cover for this eventuality?
The reason behind this is that I would like to have more control over this insurance, at the moment I am limited by the number of quotes I am able to get as well as the fact that the other owner also needs to agree to whatever we decide to do (in terms of which policy to go for and which aspects to cover or not to cover).

kingstreet

If there is subsidence, it's affecting the insurability of the whole building, not just the ground floor so you can't say it's only the ground floor flat's problem.

Contact an independent broker and see if it's possible to find the cover you require.

I suspect that as now, you will need to take off your leaseholder hat and put on your freeholder hat and continue with the commercial cover required for the building as a whole.

eddddy

Firstly - check your lease, to see who is responsible for insuring the building.

In 99% of cases it will be the freeholder.

If that's the case, as joint freeholders, you will have to arrange one buildings insurance policy that covers the whole building. (You'll probably have to ask a broker about 'Freeholder's Insurance' or 'Block of flats insurance'.)

That should be all the buildings insurance you need.

You should each pay 50% of the premium (unless the lease says otherwise). But with joint freeholders it may get messy if your neighbour refuses cooperate and/or refuses to pay their share of the premium.

However, you would need to arrange your own contents insurance.