Mortgage without subsidence insurance

Captain_Howdy

Hi all,
I've found myself in an extremely stressful situation here and seems to be getting worse by the day.

A long story short is that we have been dumped by our insurance company for non disclosure of something mentioned on the homebuyer survey we had done last year (as it was not asked about). The insurance company were passed the information by a 3rd party working for them (gdpr?!) and now they've pulled the rug from under us and are not interested in anything we try to tell them. They have now voided the insurance offer from inception.

So, we've had to look elsewhere for new building insurance and were only able to get insured WITHOUT subsidence cover. Believe me, we tried everywhere but no one would touch us.

The best I can get from anyone is that we will need to get any work done ourselves and then they need 12 months monitoring to confirm its been fixed before they will consider insuring.

Yesterday I was looking through our mortgage paperwork and it says that it is a requirement of the lender that we have subsidence cover!

Now I'm absolutely terrified what the lender will do when we tell them or they discover we are in breech of this?! I'm too scared to call them for fear of what they will demand from us but also don't want to get done for non disclosure if we don't tell them!

Please help MSE, what would you do in my situation

AnotherJoe

Did you try an insurance broker? Did you try the insurer that the previous owner had? (might be difficult to find out but possibly you could go back their solicitors)
Have you had a quote to fix whatever the ?perceived? issue is?

Captain_Howdy

Yep. No cigar.
They said that because there are multiple issues - non disclosure (which we dispute)/void policy/unresolved possible subsidence - that there is nothing they can do.

For info the survey mentioned "movement". We spoke to local builders who informed us this was historic. This did not mentioned in the insurance questionnaire as we were not asked. We subsequently raised a claim as a small crack has opened elsewhere on the house. We sent the report to the 3rd party working for the insurance company and they forwarded it to them - without our permission.

We are now trying to resolve at least the physical subsidence issue ourselves and hope that a structural engineer will be able tell us it is not subsidence.

Whatever the outcome though insurance companies are telling us that they need to be satisfied the problem has been fixed for at least a year before they will insure us again, which leads us to the issue with the mortgage!

Tom99

You need insurance to cover the other major risks so if you have exhausted the search for subsidence cover (makes sense, why should anyone cover you when the house is already on the move maybe) I would take out cover excluding subsidence elsewhere but you will have to declare this voided policy which may now also be a problem.
No point telling the mortgage co.

davidmcn

I'm not sure what the lender would do if they were aware, other than possibly try to arrange insurance themselves (and send you the bill). Not much point in them expecting you to remortgage or sell, or for them to repossess, while it's still an issue.

Captain_Howdy

Thanks all. I guess our best course of action is to get on with trying to get the subsidence stuff fixed and worry about the other stuff later.

Tom99

Captain_Howdy wrote: »

Thanks all. I guess our best course of action is to get on with trying to get the subsidence stuff fixed and worry about the other stuff later.

Yes and remember to be honest about the voided policy, its might seem unfair to maybe pay a higher premium, but void x2 would not look good at all.

Thrugelmir

Captain_Howdy wrote: »

We sent the report to the 3rd party working for the insurance company and they forwarded it to them - without our permission.

The 3rd party will be duty bound to inform the insurer of any material facts that come to light. Their contract is with the insurer not you. The 3rd party doesn't work for you.