House/Buildings Insurance Calculations

IanfromHants

Afternoon all,
Apologies if this has been covered a 1000 times, but i'm struggling to find what i'm after.

My home insurance is due and I want to do the norm, going through the comparison sites.

However, i'm stuck on the Buildings Rebuild cover and the Home Contents cover.

I did try to get to these via the MSE Website, but the links did not take me to where i'd expected to go.

So, Question 1 - how do I come up with a rebuild figure for me house?

Question 2 - how do I calculate a realistic contents figure, that doesn't sell me short, but also doesn't fail me, if ever required to call upon it?

Question 3 - with regards to items above presumably the normal upper limit of £1000 per item, do you normally list every single thing in your house/garage/shed that is above that figure to replace?

I do apologies again, for covering old ground, but thanks in advance for any advice

Ian

DullGreyGuy

1) When did you buy your property? If it's recent then look at the surveyors report and adjust for inflation. If not a google will find you the RICS property rebuild calculator that can also help.

2) Firstly you have to remember to add up everything... people mistake this as adding up the big value items but it needs to be absolutely everything and its surprising how quickly all the kids toys, underwear, kitchen items etc all add up. Its a case of doing a room by room inventory and then putting prices against it... for CDs I will say I have 200 and they're an average price of £10 each on Amazon so £2,000. For things like my TV or watch  a quick google shows what an equivalent item sells for today. 

 Remember in most cases its new for old so you need todays retail price not the secondhand value. 

3) Personally I go with the M&S Premier insurance with a £15,000 single item limit and so much easier than a £1,000 limit. Some insurers will want absolutely any item over £1,000 whereas some only want it for certain classes of good (ie not interested in your sofa but want to know about your watches, handbags etc). Some have a single item limit below £1,000



The other option is to buy a blanket policy which may have a very high limit or even be unlimited cover. Just be careful as even those with an unlimited cover headline do have inner limits so need to make sure they are suitable still. For example M&S Premier Contents is unlimited cover but has a £50,000 inner limit for jewellery, watches, works of art and a single item limit of £15,000. 

IanfromHants

Thanks very much DGG - lots to work with there

mgfvvc

The ABI rebuild calculator is the one I use.

Googling for "contents calculator" comes up with a lot of options.