Getting Building Insurance Quotes For Victorian Conversion Flats

krakaboom

Hi all, I own the upper flat (with a loft conversion room as a second bedroom) of a Victorian terrace conversion, and my neighbours downstairs own the ground floor flat. It's time to renew our building insurance, and we've always just auto-renewed (I know, I know) but this year's quote has gone up by over 100% so it's time to search around. I have a few questions:

1) Is my loft conversion considered a second floor, making the building a three-storey house? I've seen varying answers online.

2) I'm unsure how to answer the questions on the comparison websites. I know that we have to insure the entire building instead of two separate flats, but the questions asked make it difficult for me to be consistent. For example, do I say it has two bathrooms (mine) or three bathrooms (mine and my neighbour's)? Because further down the line it asks for market values (just my flat's?) and rebuild costs.(obviously the entire house).

eddddy

You should be getting "Block of Flats Insurance" (sometimes called "block insurance") - even for 2 flats in a conversion.

There are no comparison sites for that, you would need to contact an insurance broker.

If you previously bought insurance via a comparison site, you'll probably find that you had the wrong type of policy, and no claim would be paid. (And a proper 'block of flats insurance' policy is likely to be more expensive).

If you google something like 'block of flats insurance or 'block insurance' you should find a few brokers to get you started.

krakaboom

eddddy said:

You should be getting "Block of Flats Insurance" (sometimes called "block insurance") - even for 2 flats in a conversion.

There are no comparison sites for that, you would need to contact an insurance broker.

If you previously bought insurance via a comparison site, you'll probably find that you had the wrong type of policy, and no claim would be paid. (And a proper 'block of flats insurance' policy is likely to be more expensive).

If you google something like 'block of flats insurance or 'block insurance' you should find a few brokers to get you started.

Thank you, I've now started to ring brokers as you suggested. First broker has come back with even higher quotes than my renewal offer so I'm actually a bit worried now!

eddddy

krakaboom said:

Thank you, I've now started to ring brokers as you suggested. First broker has come back with even higher quotes than my renewal offer so I'm actually a bit worried now!

Yep - if you previously had an insurance policy for a house, the premium for a 'block of flats' policy will be more expensive.

But if you'd made a claim on a house policy, it wouldn't have been paid - so it was a waste of money really.  (And so it would have been catastrophic, if the building had burnt down.)

krakaboom

eddddy said:

krakaboom said:

Thank you, I've now started to ring brokers as you suggested. First broker has come back with even higher quotes than my renewal offer so I'm actually a bit worried now!

Yep - if you previously had an insurance policy for a house, the premium for a 'block of flats' policy will be more expensive.

But if you'd made a claim on a house policy, it wouldn't have been paid - so it was a waste of money really.  (And so it would have been catastrophic, if the building had burnt down.)

I can't remember how we found our current insurer, but I'm confident that it's appropriate, as we have spoken to the brokers many times and they know exactly the setup that we have (Victorian conversion, two properties, two owners, etc) and it's all stated in the policy documents. But it's certainly useful to know that we can't use comparison websites... I mean, we're definitely not unusual in our setup so I don't know why it's not an option.

user1977

krakaboom said:

eddddy said:

krakaboom said:

Thank you, I've now started to ring brokers as you suggested. First broker has come back with even higher quotes than my renewal offer so I'm actually a bit worried now!

Yep - if you previously had an insurance policy for a house, the premium for a 'block of flats' policy will be more expensive.

But if you'd made a claim on a house policy, it wouldn't have been paid - so it was a waste of money really.  (And so it would have been catastrophic, if the building had burnt down.)

I mean, we're definitely not unusual in our setup so I don't know why it's not an option.

The comparison sites are aimed at "vanilla" mass consumer products, whereas freeholders are not really in that market.