Rebuild/Reinstatement Valuation and Insurance.

stuart45

The free BCIS calculator will give you a rough idea of the cost. A surveyor would need to visit the property to do a more accurate estimate.

BucketFull

Thanks, I'll give the non-visiting surveyor a miss then!

saajan_12

Try out different rebuild values on an insurance comparison site under and over the purchase price. That'll tell you if its cheaper to get a more precise rebuild value or just overinsure by a healthy margin on the purchase price. Remember you'll need to keep buying insurance each year with an updated rebuild value, so there's always some assumptions. 

Sandtree

BucketFull said:

Thanks for all the helpful replies!

Is there any difference between purchasing a survey from surveyors who offer the rebuild/reinstatement costs without visiting the premises and obtaining a free quote from the RICS ABI website myself? Do such surveyors simply refer to the RICS ABI website themselves or do they do anything special that produces a more accurate/reliable quote?

RICS have a more advanced tool that isn't free to use... it takes more inputs and can deal with more complex buildings.

Home insurance can be written on either a sum insured basis where you advise them of the rebuild value and they price based on that or on a blanket basis (also known as bedroom rated) where everyone is offered a £1m (or some other high figure) and so instead of rating on the rebuild value they use questions like the number of bedrooms or bathrooms to price instead.

Clearly the later gives you comfort that you wont need to readjust with any form of regularity unless you have a very grand property. Due to negative selection however it can be expensive if you have a below average requirements. 


If you insured the property for £200,000 and it should have been insured for £300,000 then you have the risk of one of two things happening... firstly, and worst, they could say that you obviously should have known that it was too low a figure and so they will void the policy under CIDRA for intentional/wreckless false declaration. More likely they will point out that your insurance has an average clause in it so as you've only insured your property for 2/3 of its value they will only pay out 2/3 of any claim so you £30,000 fire claim gets settled as £20,000 less excess.

BucketFull

Thanks for the helpful advice.

K_S

@BucketFull If you are using a mortgage For the benefit of others who may come across this thread and are using a mortgage to purchase the property - the lender valuation report often mentions the reinstatement cost like in the excerpt below.

Not all lenders will share a valuation report but it might be worth asking your broker (or the lender if direct) whether they can share a copy with you.

As the report is for the benefit of the lender, you can't rely on it formally and I've no idea how accurate/different it is compared to if you engaged a surveyor separately. 

user1977

K_S said:

@BucketFull If you are using a mortgage

The OP refers to a cash purchase, so I guess not.

canaldumidi

and I note it says "Reinstatement cost (BCIS)" which I assume means they've relied on the same calculator linked to earlier:

https://abi.bcis.co.uk/

stuart45

They should be using the one you pay for, rather than the free one. I've had a go on both of them, and the free one isn't as involved as the other. 

BucketFull

Thanks. I think I will go with a surveyor for this one. Reallymoving.com has provided me with some relatively cheap quotes including some which say the valuation is free. I hope they are not just using the free BCIS to provide the quote!