Subdividing land for home insurance purposes

bill_on_line

Hello Group

Approx 4 acres of land with one house more or less on centre of this land. The land is on 30 degree incline and a small river forms one of this lands boundarys at the valley bottom. The land is registered on the electronic land registery.

For home insurance reasons i want to remove the lower land from this property as it creatses problems when trying to obtain home insurance. As this lower land/field can occasionaly be flooded in winter and has to be declared when obtaining home insurance quotes. Eg the occasional flooding of a field (which is no problem to us) puts up the price of home insurance by 500%. If the lower field nolonger formed part of the property to be insured then there would be no need to declare the property field gets flooded. The main concern for me is the home insurance covers the house from the main perels. The flooding of the land is not a problem as it occasionaly occours 50 feet below the elevation of the house.

How would the best way to seperate this registered land in to two seperate entities for home insurance purposes?

Can it be done with a declaration of trust?
Could ask the land registery to subdivide the land in to two registered titles?
Could gift the lower field to a relative and create two registered titles?

kind regards
Bill

davidmcn

Is this really the best way of doing it? I would have thought it would make more sense to find an insurer willing to disregard the flood-prone part of the property.

Davesnave

davidmcn wrote: »

Is this really the best way of doing it? I would have thought it would make more sense to find an insurer willing to disregard the flood-prone part of the property.

When I insure my property, the insurers treat the house, an acre of garden, a 60' x 28' outbuilding and some smaller buildings as one unit: i.e. the home.

There is nothing agricultural stored in the barns.

The 5 acres of fields and copses are treated seperately. There's a stream, but it doesn't flood, so the main concerns might be people entering the land and suffering personal injury, or trees falling on vehicles on the adjoining road. Current price for insuring the land itself is £150 p.a.

I'm with a company that currently serves only Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset. While they're specialists for landed property, they deal with town property too. Maybe you need to contact a rural specialist too.

G_M

You could split the Title into two, though I have read that the LR is reluctant to do this where the 2 new Titles are to be owned by the same person. I may be wrong though.


I would start by contacting a decent rural insurance broker. Or by posting your query on the insurance forum!

bill_on_line

Hi I have contacted various insurance companies and brokers and if i tell them the fact that a field floods they either do not want to quote or the premium goes up from £120 (comparison site) to £550+
So spliting the legal property boundary would save a lot of money in both the short and long run.

bill_on_line

Hello G_M
"You could split the Title into two, though I have read that the LR is reluctant to do this where the 2 new Titles are to be owned by the same person". I believe you are true as the LR have told me the same verbably.
However, my option 3, if i gift the land to another member of the family this will overcome the LR problem as thereis a different owner.

bill_on_line

Hello Dave
I listen to your reply, however when i have read the small print of various policies i have looked at it states that the property is defned as all the land under the title on the LR.

I wish it was easy, but the small print has caused confusion even to a insurance broker who overlooked that cover was not suitable.

Davesnave

bill_on_line wrote: »

Hello Dave
I listen to your reply, however when i have read the small print of various policies i have looked at it states that the property is defned as all the land under the title on the LR.

I wish it was easy, but the small print has caused confusion even to a insurance broker who overlooked that cover was not suitable.

We've recently switched to Cornish Mutual, and they're the first insurer I've used that sends someone out to view the property and (presumably) assess whether there are any obvious extra risks before quoting.

They were then willing to split the property for insurance purposes. We don't do any visible farming from the outbuildings, so the fields alone were assessed as a seperate risk and insured accordingly.

This saved us about £100 on our previous premium.

Norman_Castle

The flooding of the land is not a problem as it occasionaly occours 50 feet below the elevation of the house.

If you're sure there is no realistic chance of the house flooding could you either insure without flood liability or with a very high excess for flooding?