Need advice Home insurance invalid due to unoccupied house

waldopbarnstormer

Hello, I need advice on a situation I find myself in. I have just moved in to a new house but I have not sold my old house yet. I contacted my insurer AXA to tell them that my old house would be unoccupied for more than 60 days until it could be sold.

AXA told me that my policy does not cover my house being unoccupied for more than 30 days, so I went and searched around for a new insurer. I found a good quote from Intelligent Insurance and while on the phone to them I mentioned that AXA would not cover my house while unoccupied.

The sales rep immediately told me that this counts as declined or cancelled insurance and I would have to declare this on future applications. I took out the policy with Intelligent Insurance but I am now panicking that I have to declare this on my future insurance quotes. I did a quick check on a comparison site and it raised my premium by over £100 a year. It also reduced the number of providers willing to quote to just 4!

Can anyone advise me on if this is true and I do have to declare it as declined or cancelled insurance? I am really stressed that I have screwed up and don't know how to tell my wife.

Aretnap

The sales rep is (probably) wrong. I'm assuming that you told AXA before you actually left the house unoccupied for 30 days? If so, the conversation will have gone something like this: 

You: "Hello, I'm thinking of leaving my house empty for a while, is that OK?"
AXA: "Sorry sir, if you do that we won't be able to cover you"
You: "Fair enough, I'd better cancel the policy then. Please end my cover on the 1st of May (or whenever)"

You see what happened there? AXA didn't cancel the policy, you did. It's no different to you cancelling your car insurance policy mid-term because you have found a better deal it because you've sold the car, and it doesn't have to be declared. 

Even if the conversation didn't go exactly like that the same principles apply - it's a cancellation initiated by the customer, not one imposed by the insurance company. If you wanted to keep your AXA policy badly enough, you always had the option of moving back into your old house so it wasn't unoccupied for 30 days, so ultimately whether to keep the policy or not was still your decision. 

It's a bit more wobbly if you had already left the old place empty for a long time before you contacted AXA, and they cancelled the policy because you'd breached its terms. Even then, it will depend on the policy wording whether you're breaching the terms by leaving it unoccupied for a long period, or whether you just can't claim for certain things that happen during that period.

If in doubt ask AXA if they have recorded it as an insurer initiated cancellation - I bet they haven't.

Flugelhorn

many policies have a "house needs to be occupied for x days out or y" - in which case you just move back and stay there for a few nights - that is what we did when had an empty house, useful to go back anyway to cut the grass and generally make sure things were OK

waldopbarnstormer

Thank you for the comments. We only moved out last week and it is a 5 minute drive away so we regularly go back to check in the house and pick up post. 

I am feeling a bit more assured now, because if this was a true thing so many people could easily end up in this situation if you inherit a property or just moving house regularly. It doesn't help that you can't speak to a human anymore and you just end up going round in circles trying to navigate with a chatbot.

Aretnap

Flugelhorn said:

many policies have a "house needs to be occupied for x days out or y" - in which case you just move back and stay there for a few nights - that is what we did when had an empty house, useful to go back anyway to cut the grass and generally make sure things were OK

Though watch out for wordings like "regularly slept in" - an overnight stay sandwiched by two 29 day periods of emptiness would still fall foul of a clause worded like that.

DullGreyGuy

waldopbarnstormer said:

Hello, I need advice on a situation I find myself in. I have just moved in to a new house but I have not sold my old house yet. I contacted my insurer AXA to tell them that my old house would be unoccupied for more than 60 days until it could be sold.

AXA told me that my policy does not cover my house being unoccupied for more than 30 days, so I went and searched around for a new insurer. I found a good quote from Intelligent Insurance and while on the phone to them I mentioned that AXA would not cover my house while unoccupied.

The sales rep immediately told me that this counts as declined or cancelled insurance and I would have to declare this on future applications. I took out the policy with Intelligent Insurance but I am now panicking that I have to declare this on my future insurance quotes. I did a quick check on a comparison site and it raised my premium by over £100 a year. It also reduced the number of providers willing to quote to just 4!

Can anyone advise me on if this is true and I do have to declare it as declined or cancelled insurance? I am really stressed that I have screwed up and don't know how to tell my wife.

Depends how things went... they caught you not living at the property and cancelled it then thats something you need to declare. You telling them that it's going to happen, them saying they won't be able to cover it and you deciding to move anyway rather than changing your plan is you cancelling it. 

If its the later then you also need to go back to the broker and get them to correct their records else you answer "yes" to the question may make its way onto various industry databases meaning it'll be flagged in the future when you answer "no"

maman

I think the rep is probably wrong too.

We had a similar situation last year. We were having some building work done and my existing insurer wouldn't cover the house while it was being done. I got the impression they had an upper ceiling on cost/scope of the work. They explained this to me and said that I would need to cancel, obtain a refund for the remaining months of their policy and they'd be happy to welcome me back when the building work was completed.

That's exactly what we did, having taken out a specialist policy for 6 months while the major structural work was taking place.

I'd agree with the poster who said it's a bit like selling your car part way through a policy. If you don't intend to buy another car or buy something like a bus or articulated lorry that the insurance company don't deal with then you cancel the policy and go elsewhere.