Buildings Insurance - Share of Freehold

mdbrockley

I'm in the process of buying the upper floor flat of a 2 flat house conversion. It's Share of Freehold and there is no management company set up to manage the freehold. The seller and the other co-freeholders just bought the freehold from the previous freeholder in January.
My solicitor is telling me I need to buy a joint insurance policy with the other co-freeholders to cover the whole building. The sellers solicitor is saying this isn't necessary and both sets of co-freeholders should buy their own buildings insurance.
Any advice?

Dntal

Hello
I, after 17 years of paying separate house insurance for my Flat ( and my neighbour hers, discovered that my insurance would not cover me this year when I called to query if indeed we should have one insurance,  as they said if something happened that it would not be straight forward as to which insurance should cover what. We have a share of the Freehold and separate lease holds on the flats. We ended up getting a shared Landlords insurance which saved a lot of money. I am now left annoyed that nobody had mentioned this before and the amount of money that we both wasted on insurance over the years! 
If I can figure out a way to post my query on this site there will be a new thread to query if I can get a refund somehow!
Good luck

Sandtree

Assuming you don't live in Scotland then I fully agree with your solicitor, though not fully sure where the relevance of the seller's solicitors comes from unless they are also representing the non-selling co-owner in some capacity.

You will also most likely need commercial buildings insurance rather than Home Buildings insurance as the property isnt a single home but a decent broker will be able to advise you properly. 

rs65

Dntal said:

Hello
I, after 17 years of paying separate house insurance for my Flat ( and my neighbour hers, discovered that my insurance would not cover me this year when I called to query if indeed we should have one insurance,  as they said if something happened that it would not be straight forward as to which insurance should cover what. We have a share of the Freehold and separate lease holds on the flats. We ended up getting a shared Landlords insurance which saved a lot of money. I am now left annoyed that nobody had mentioned this before and the amount of money that we both wasted on insurance over the years! 
If I can figure out a way to post my query on this site there will be a new thread to query if I can get a refund somehow!
Good luck

There is a bid difference between 'would not cover me' and 'it would not be straightforward'

antoniociavolella

Hi everyone. Can you please advise if in my situation do I HAVE to buy joint policy? Or can we just have separate building insurance policies?

We have a share of freehold for a house split in two maisonettes (one on the ground floor, the other on floor 1 and floor 2) and we lease to ourselves as maisonette owners the leasehold for the two properties for 999 years. There are no common areas (both have their own entrance, separated with a fence), and the top maisonette owner has sole roof responsibility as per freehold agreement. None of the leases mention insurance obligation, so by default I presume that ourselves as joint freeholders buy a joint building insurance.

However the block insurance is just terribly more expensive: the two maisonettes get insured for about £150-170/annum, while the cheapest joint policy comes at £700-800/annum.

It's interesting that joint policies are cheaper. What I am doing wrong? I have searched extensively for quotes online and looked at the detail. 

FataVerde

antoniociavolella said:

Hi everyone. Can you please advise if in my situation do I HAVE to buy joint policy? Or can we just have separate building insurance policies?

We have a share of freehold for a house split in two maisonettes (one on the ground floor, the other on floor 1 and floor 2) and we lease to ourselves as maisonette owners the leasehold for the two properties for 999 years. There are no common areas (both have their own entrance, separated with a fence), and the top maisonette owner has sole roof responsibility as per freehold agreement. None of the leases mention insurance obligation, so by default I presume that ourselves as joint freeholders buy a joint building insurance.

However the block insurance is just terribly more expensive: the two maisonettes get insured for about £150-170/annum, while the cheapest joint policy comes at £700-800/annum.

It's interesting that joint policies are cheaper. What I am doing wrong? I have searched extensively for quotes online and looked at the detail. 

Have you figured this out? I'm in a similar situation.

faerielight

I am interested too.
 I have been paying about £400 a year from my share of insurance which my neighbour told me when I bought this that this was the only way of getting it.. it’s very expensive, if I could I would rather source the insurance myself

Sandtree

antoniociavolella said:

Hi everyone. Can you please advise if in my situation do I HAVE to buy joint policy? Or can we just have separate building insurance policies?

We have a share of freehold for a house split in two maisonettes (one on the ground floor, the other on floor 1 and floor 2) and we lease to ourselves as maisonette owners the leasehold for the two properties for 999 years. There are no common areas (both have their own entrance, separated with a fence), and the top maisonette owner has sole roof responsibility as per freehold agreement. None of the leases mention insurance obligation, so by default I presume that ourselves as joint freeholders buy a joint building insurance.

However the block insurance is just terribly more expensive: the two maisonettes get insured for about £150-170/annum, while the cheapest joint policy comes at £700-800/annum.

It's interesting that joint policies are cheaper. What I am doing wrong? I have searched extensively for quotes online and looked at the detail. 

The reason why its cheaper to by personal lines insurance is because its automated, straight through processing with very thin margins that works because a company can sell millions of policies. 

Block insurance is commercial insurance, rarely fully automated but capable of dealing with a much wide range of properties etc. Margins are wider generally but then the cost of a really bad claim is massively more... imagine trying to underpin the Shard if it had subsidence?

The problem of having independent policies each is the inevitable arguments... who's insurance responds to subsidence? Just ground floors? What about the roof blowing off in a storm? And not talking about arguments between you two but the two insurers.

Lets assume you are the upper floor... what happens if there is subsidence impacting both units but the person under you has forgotten to renew their policy? Your insurers won't pay to fix your home if the building under you is about to fall down