Value of House Contents

LazyLuna

Is it ok just to give a nominal value for house contents?  We have to complete a full IHT400 because of claiming RNRB but there will be no inheritance tax to pay.  There are no items of any high value just the usual furniture, clothes and white goods etc which I know are worth very little secondhand.  What would anyone suggest as an appropriate value for a single person living in a small 3 bed semi?  

MikeJXE

I'm a single person in a 1 bed flat

Over the last 20 years I have moved down from a 4 bed detached giving away my stuff on the way down 

Now even though everything I have is less than 3 years old I wouldn't put more than 10k to it 

Jowwie

My two penn'orth is £1k, although I have not had to do an IHT400.

JGB1955

For IHT purposes I would (and did) put £500.  It cost us over that to clear the house!

BrainDrained

MikeJXE said:

I'm a single person in a 1 bed flat

Over the last 20 years I have moved down from a 4 bed detached giving away my stuff on the way down 

Now even though everything I have is less than 3 years old I wouldn't put more than 10k to it 

There's a massive difference between what an insurance company would regard as the replacement value and what you'd actually get if you sold everything.  

I was in the same position as the OP (the actual value wouldn't have made any difference as the total was way below the IHT threshold) 

I used the likely secondhand value, which was probably overstated.

 A house clearance company offered me £120 for the entire contents which included quite a lot of books (nice editions of classics) and CDs as well as some decent items of furniture including a top of the range recliner chair.  I know they have to make it worth their while but I was so disgusted at their offer I cleared everything myself. I didn't get much at all, and I ended up giving most of the stuff away to charity in the end. I still have most of the books. 

BooJewels

I think most people here put a fairly nominal amount to cover everything - nothing like £10k, unless you know there are valuables or antiques.

With my parents' home, we put £4k on the Probate form as we thought there were some nice pieces of antique furniture and they had collections of stuff like Swarovski crystal, thousands of books and my Dad had a LOT of vintage photographic gear.  In the end, we had to pay someone to take the 'antiques' as there was no interest in buying it at all.  We sold the camera gear to a specialist shop and had a garage sale where the old junk in there we thought was worthless made a few hundred pounds.  We sold everything for about £3,500 and paid £600 to have the house cleared.  Even things that appeared to have potential value - like a first edition Lewis Caroll book - were in such poor condition that they ended up unsaleable.  I took a car full of the more interesting stuff to an auction house and ended up, after fees and costs and a year later, with about £70.  It wasn't even worth the effort.

With my aunts house that I'm just doing, I put down £400 - as nothing appears saleable (not for enough to be worth the effort that is) and we've given everything to neighbours or charity shops and will again pay several hundred pounds to have everything else cleared.

comeandgo

Unless any items known to have specific value the value of second hands goods is minimal, next to nothing.

Mojisola

LazyLuna said:

Is it ok just to give a nominal value for house contents? 

There are no items of any high value just the usual furniture, clothes and white goods etc which I know are worth very little secondhand. 

What would anyone suggest as an appropriate value for a single person living in a small 3 bed semi?  

The solicitor that helped me with Dad's estate put £500 for the 4-bed house contents and personal belongings - he said that, in reality, they wouldn't get that much even if we were able to sell them. 

poppystar

At the end of the day, unless there are obvious items of value like jewellery (although second hand even that is worth a lot less than purchase or insurance value), then I think most people in reality end up with a negative value as the cost of clearing exceeds the sale value. 

I asked the question to the Probate helpline and they said just put about £500 down - they know that things have little resale value. 

theoretica

If you are well clear of the IHT boundaries and confident there wouldn't be any IHT even if the house sold for considerably more than you expect then whether you put £100 or £1000 down won't make any practical difference to anyone.  So don't agonise over it.  It is just a question to make sure you have remembered to include all the 17th century inlaid furniture in the drawing room...  If you leave white goods in the house when you sell it their value will be part of the house value, if clothes etc go to charity that donation would cancel out anyway.

MalMonroe

Hi, I'm a council tenant and a pensioner and pay just 98p a week for Aviva household contents insurance which covers my daughter and myself for £6,000. We've claimed three times on that over the years we've been here (16) but nothing like £6k (yet!)

However, my neighbour in a flat - block of two - next door to me had a fire last year and it raced through their flat and nothing was left. They were not insured. So not sure how much it would cost them to replace everything they had but they've lost all their belongings and their flat (uninhabitable at the moment) and also their beautiful cat. 

The thing is that insurance tends to be something that people don't really take seriously until something happens. On the three occasions I had to claim, I was so glad I had the insurance. (It somehow comes with no excess to pay, as well - is that just a council tenant/pensioner thing?)

With the £6k insurance I pay for, there was a lower sum I could have paid but that only covered £3k worth of contents - and that was the lowest figure that we were allowed to take out insurance for, so there was a lower limit for us.

I wouldn't skimp on insurance now because if we had to start from scratch and replace everything, it would be more than £6k. And my neighbour's fire brought that home to me like a slap in the face. She and her son had nothing but the clothes they had on their backs - they were out at the time - and there was nothing salvageable at all.

For a single person living in a small three bed semi, I'd think £6k would be ample. Don't underestimate the cost of replacing every single thing, if you had a major fire or a flood. These things do happen. 

Just my own thoughts and opinions of course but learning from my neighbour's experience. She is homeless as things stand, with money to find for carpets, furniture, curtains, kitchen utensils, clothes for her and her son, bedroom furniture, living room furniture, paint and decorating materials, the list is endless. Oh and the smoke and fire alarms had been disarmed(!) so the council won't help her either. It's also doubtful whether an insurance company would have paid out. 

It can be a scary world out there... hope that helps. I wouldn't skimp.