Contents insurance renewal on rental. Buying a house in next 2 months!

bopsybunny

Hi everyone,

Just looking for advice on contents/home insurance.

We currently have contents insurance for our unfurnished 2 bed rented house. Our renewal is 2nd December and the price has gone up significantly (from £10pcm to £16pcm) so I've looked for other quotes.

Trouble is - we are currently in the process of buying our first home. We don't have a specific date for completion yet, but anticipate that it will be somewhere between late December to early January. We will of course need full buildings/contents cover for the new house.

Contents insurance is so cheap (lowest quote is £3.83 per month, or £38 per year upfront!), but you have to get cover for a year. We will need to change our policy very quickly, possibly within the first month! All policies I've seen have about £20 quid amendment fees and £30 cancellation fees. Our current provider charges £20/£35 for these fees, so it will be much more expensive to stay, based on the renewal premium.

We'd be paying to amend the contents cover if we moved it over to the new house, and we could get just buildings cover on top for the new house, for the first year. Or we could cancel the contents cover when we move, and get combined buildings/contents cover for the new house. I don't know what would be less hassle/cheaper.

We want to be risk averse, so we want continuous cover, but it's so frustrating that we will possibly need to pay the equivalent of a full year's contents insurance for just 1 month's cover. In the end it's only max £40 we'll lose out on, but I hate wasting money.

Any suggestions welcome!

datlex

I took out contents earlier in year and then added on buildings when I bought with same company. Both expire at same time.

bitsandpieces

Halifax told me I could cancel my contents insurance when moving house and they wouldn't charge cancellation fees. You seem to be getting it very cheap, though - so might be as well just going with that!

kerri_gt

datlex wrote: »

I took out contents earlier in year and then added on buildings when I bought with same company. Both expire at same time.

Same here, with no additional charges. Obviously this means you can't then shop around until the entire policy expires but tbh, with everything else a move involves, wanting to look at new insurance providers (as the current provider was well priced) was right at the bottom of my 'to do' list anyway.

sheepy21

I took out a cheap policy with a tiny cancellation fee as we only needed contents for a month. Cancelled when we bought our house and took about a new policy

bopsybunny

Update - I got Ageas Elastic contents insurance for £5.88 per month. It's a monthly rolling contract with no penalty to cancel. Ideal!