House insurance on barn conversions

Exochorda

Why do insurance companies base their quote for barn conversions on the date of the original barn construction, and not the converted building.  The rebuild costs on a converted barn would be far greater than an agricultural barn, or am I missing something?

FlorayG

You have to make the decision on the rebuild costs - what the insurance company says is just a suggestion and they probably have no information on the current rebuild costs and can only go with the information they have. If you increase the rebuild costs to what it would actually cost, of course your insurance premium will be higher

DullGreyGuy

Exochorda said:

Why do insurance companies base their quote for barn conversions on the date of the original barn construction, and not the converted building.  The rebuild costs on a converted barn would be far greater than an agricultural barn, or am I missing something?

Because a conversion means that the structure of the building is broadly unchanged and things like foundations will be in line with the standard when the building was first built not the date of the conversion. If you had knocked it down and built a new building then ti would be based on the date of the rebuild. 

Rebuild costs are specified separately to the date of construction - the two arent linked particularly strongly.