Building and Contents for a flat

sundaygirl_2

hi i have just bought my first flat and i'm struggling to find someone to quote me for home insurance on a flat online. surely this is not a strange thing to be re-questing so is there anywhere people would recommend to get buildings and contents for a flat?

JimmyTheWig

Are you sure you need buildings insurance?
If it's a leasehold flat I believe the buildings insurance will be part of the maintenance that you pay. At least that was the case when I was in a flat.
The point is that it is pretty hard for just one flat to fall down without affecting the others. So say you were on the top floor with buildings insurance and the person below you didn't have insurance. If the building fell down how are they going to rebuild your flat without rebuilding his?

oldagetraveller

Agree with Jimmy, F in Law moved into a flat last year and only needs contents insurance as the building is covered by it's owner/builder.

sundaygirl_2

The flat is in Scotland so it is feudal no such thing as leasehold or freehold in scotland except for pubs (i think). I think feudal is closer to freehold, I basically own a 6th of the building.

Cazza

It usual for a block of flats to be insured as one building, then for you to just ay your share of the insurance. Check with the solicitor to make certain you really do need insurance, as you wouldn't normally.

sundaygirl_2

All flats in scotland are sold this way. Some have an external factor which you pay to maintain the building and they might also provide insurance but not always. Mine is not factored there is just a "close fund" I pay a tenner a month to go towards lights and paint and gardening etc. This is very common practise.

dmg24

I got a quote for mine from esure (mine is leasehold, so they should cover feudal).

Rimo2021

As sundaygirl says it's different in Scotland where generally flats are insured individually (so you can shop around). You have the legal right (thanks to the tenement act) to check that the other flats in the building are insured.

I'm not sure why you are having trouble getting a quote though - have you tried confused.com ?

sundaygirl_2

I tried confused.com first and got zip! It was getting really annoying filling in all the details then it says at the end "we do not insure this type of property". Why not say that before I waste 15 min filling it in??!!

Eventually got a quote from Direct Line and also Tesco. Virgin also gave me a quote but it was much higher. And Marks and Spencer was nice enough to tell me on the first page they do not insure flats.
:T

Thanks for the help.

Rimo2021

I see what you mean! I have been insured with Direct Line for more than 4 years (since i bought this tenement flat) and just accepted the renewal quote but decided to shop around a week or so ago after reading an article in the Guardian about a man who checked his direct line renewal quote against an online quote (on direct lines website) and found he was basically being ripped off.

I tried the confused.com site and only got one quote but i mistakenly thought this was because I entered a rebuild cost of 1M which is what my DL cover is for ..but I see you are right after i tried again with a lower figure and still couldn't get quotes.

Did you end up phoning Insurers directly as that is what I think I will have to do? I would like to get quote from more than 2 others ideally though.

pborojon

Speak to the neighbours to see who they are insured with.