Virtual house downsize - can I save anything?

Holeypockets

Greetings fellow moneysavers

I have a 4 bed semi but because two of the bedrooms were quite small and we didn't need the spare room I have knocked the small bedroom and the spare room into one big bedroom. Therefore my house is in reality now a 3 bed semi. My question is can I make any saving on this - e.g house insurance, council tax, anything else???

Any help appreciated.

peb

The quick answer is no. Council Tax is determined on value on a past date (which I can never remember) and I would imagine the value has not in any event changed much. House Insurance is based on the rebuild value - not the number of rooms.

HTH

tyllwyd

It's worth telling the house insurance people anyway, just so they can't use it as an excuse to wriggle out of a claim. I just told our insurance people that we've built an extension on our house making it four bedrooms not three, and they've charged me an extra £25 over the year (of which I think about £15 was an admin charge for changing the policy).

I expect strictly you should tell your mortage company as well.

Snaggles

Strictly speaking you're not usually allowed to make a change of that type to your property without getting permission from the mortgage provider anyway, but in practice they probably wont care very much as long as the property hasn't lost so much value that their security would be at risk (ie drastically reduced 'loan to valuation' to the point where they might not recoup their money if they had to repossess).

As far as insurance goes, some contents insurance calculations go on number of bedrooms, but generally they ask you how much your contents need insuring for,so unless you have got rid of massive amounts of 'stuff' (tvs, pcs, furniture etc) when you knocked the two rooms together, it probably wont make much difference to how much insurance you will need.