Homebuyer's Protection Insurance (cover conveyancing fees etc) - worth buying?

purplebutterfly

Just had an offer accepted and sorting out a survey etc.  I planned to take out Homebuyer's Insurance to cover our conveyancing/survey fees etc if things fall apart.

Any advice either for or against would be welcome - and any recommendations for firms would also be great. 

Thanks

(sorry if this has already been answered but MSE search function isn't helping!) 

AnotherJoe

Well, anecdotally 1 in 3 fall through so what would be your costs if it fell through and what would the insurance cost and woudl that be more than 1/3 the legal etc costs??

Also, would the insurance cover both your buying and selling costs? And what caveats are there? eg say you pull out because you dont like a survey result. Will they still pay?

user1977

Here's a previous discussion - not a great money-saving option really:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6001537/on-gazumping-why-not-suggest-home-buyers-insurance

eddddy

I've come across a few people who have complained that their claims were rejected. I've never come across anyone who's successfully claimed on this type of policy.

The issue seems to be because of the narrow set of circumstances that allow you to claim.

Also, some of the companies offering this type of insurance seem to be saying fundamentally misleading stuff on their websites - so I would put this type of insurance in the same category as PPI. i.e dodgy products sold by dodgy companies. But perhaps I'm being harsh.

So I'd be interested to see if anybody reports a positive experience of claiming on this type of policy.

GDB2222

You can’t get insurance against things that are under your own control, and there are always exclusions in policies. For example, you can hardly expect your house insurance to reimburse you if you deliberately set fire to it. 

Home buying is such a subjective process that it must be incredibly difficult to define exactly under what circumstances homebuyers insurance should pay out. 

Besides that, with one third of purchases failing, the starting point for the premium needs to be one third of the costs to be reimbursed. Add on the overheads and margins, and the premiums will be within spitting distance of 100%, ie completely pointless. So, something has to give, and the obvious result is that there are myriad exclusions which make it hard to claim.