ftb about to exchange, high insurance premiums, why?

emmamc252

we are due to exchange contracts a week today. we are buying a detatched house in the town where we have always lived. its a really nice place, low levels of crime etc. my mothers house insurance for a house twice the price of ours is just £180 a year, including accidental damage etc. we have searched the net and the cheapest we can get ours for is £380, over double on a cheaper house. its really worried us as we can't understand why this would be so much higher. we have asked other people who livein the town who have houses in asimilar price range and they don't pay anything like this. its making us wonder if perhaps there has been some problems just on this road, or if theres something we don't know but the insurance company do.
we had a financial review with the bank we have our mortgae offer with and mentioned the price to her and she said, that seems very very high for round here. any advice,
or is there a way i can find out on hwat criteria the insurance companies are charging this amount, for example if they have knowledge that a lot of homes round here have been robbed or something. quite genuinley we live in a sleepy little seaside town where if someones done for drink driving its the fromt page of the local paper for a month! help!

LandyAndy

Is this contents or buildings and contents?

I thought 380 sounded quite reasonable for buildings and contents. Its about what I pay here in Hampshire but is about 40 % of what I paid in Warrington.

merlinthehappypig

Two suggestions:

Shop around, obviously. I appreciate that you have done this, but perhaps try confused.com or similar to get a lot of quotes. Check the details that you have given the insurance companies - if your quotes are high compared with others it can only be down to something in your personal circumstances that is affecting the premium.

Secondly, go through Quidco or similar when you have got a decent quote. Plenty of companies on there will give around £100 cashback. Do this each year and it's quite a saving,

emmamc252

i have done all the price comparrison sights and all the independents. this is buildings and contents but like i said this is not what our area tends to be, like i said my mums is only 180 so oyu are talking bout doubling that. the only difference between us and my mums is the postcode nad the fact that my mums home is occupied all day, whereas we both work in the day. thats the only difference and i can't understand that doubling hte premium,

chriz1000

Try Tesco’s. Mine was coming out around the £300 mark from all of the price comparison websites for basic buildings and contents (3 bedroom detached).

Tesco’s came in at £145 without accidental damage and £210 with accidental damage and personal possessions cover away from the property. It was another £20 on top of that if I wanted to have my voluntary excess as £0, which I thought was worth it.

emmamc252

its not so much that i'm bothered about paying the extra, obviously i'd prefer not to, its more that i'm nervous about whats so terrible aout this postcode that it doubles an insurance premium!

just to check that i hadn't entered anything incorrectly, i went back to my original cheapest quote which was with direct line, and changed the postcode to my mums postcode and got a quote for that, came out at 190, still had our ages and 1945 build in etc, but its still half the price!

chriz1000

There have probably just been a high level of claims on your area then. These could even be claims for accidental damage. I wouldn’t worry about it. If the searches haven’t brought anything too untoward up their shouldn’t be a problem

moneysavinmonkey

have you checked environment agency website for flood risk?

chriz1000

moneysavinmonkey wrote: »

have you checked environment agency website for flood risk?

Surely if there was any problem though the solicitor would have brought it to emmamc252 attention when they did the searches?

moneysavinmonkey

maybe - maybe not! It could be the flood risk is higher than where the OP's mum lives but not enough to warrant concern.. could account for some of the uplift in the premium? Just a thought.

Voyager2002

emmamc252 wrote: »

just to check that i hadn't entered anything incorrectly, i went back to my original cheapest quote which was with direct line, and changed the postcode to my mums postcode and got a quote for that, came out at 190, still had our ages and 1945 build in etc, but its still half the price!

Good idea. Try the same experiment separately with buildings and with contents. If the buildings premium is similar for the two postcodes but the contents premium jumps, that means there have been a lot of claims for things like burglary in your area, and that could just be chance (and you can always fit a good burglar alarm).

However, if the premium stays the same for contents but jumps for building cover, that suggests that the insurance company suspects something very nasty about your location. In which case, you should contact them and try to find out what it is all about.

Obviously repeat this experiment with a number of insurers.