Wildly differing Contents insurance amount

Woby_Tide

Using the Hiscox calculator on the Home Insurance article on the main site it suggested that for the two of us and a 9 month old in a 3 bed detached we should be looking at £96,000 worth of contents cover?!?!? having gone thorugh their suggestions I pared it down to around £60k which looks ok but is still way more than what we currently have coverage for i.e. £35k. Yet going through the online insurance broker sites, a lot won't even quote for contents value over £35k(£45k on some) which if the Hiscox site is correct still seems way too low. Anything over those values is classed as a high amount, which I would have thought we'd be below average as small family(on Lloyds TSB their recommended figure for our property and family size was....£21k....which even I could see was woefully small)

Just wondered what others thought/or currently covered themselves for realistically, the estimates just seem to be too far apart to be accurate?

Porker

Hiscox specialise in high value homes, they are not for the normal 'man in the street' type punter. Bad advice to look at them frankly, unless you have a country pile somewhere.

some firms will quote you on a bedroom rated premise, and these typically offer very high sums insured (£500k for buildings and £100k for contents). this means that you are never underinsured, however it isnt a very clever way of pricing, as this will suit some people and most others will just end up paying a higher premium for cover they dont need. If you only have £20k of contents why would you subsidise the premium of someone who has £70k and has bought the same policy as you? this causes some people problems when they shop around at renewal, as if you thought that you actually had £100k of contents you would put this into a quote engine on a website as your sum insured - if the underwriter is rating on the actual sums insured, rather than on the bedroom rated method you would end up getting a massively inflated quote, making the bed rated version seem like a good deal, when it actually isnt.

Porker

explaination of bedroom rated here

Woby_Tide

cheers, I only went with Hiscox calculator based on Martins article, but having tapered it down to what I did think wasn't a bad guess was still £65k as I say. So far think Halifax is offering best deal, they have unlimited buildings and contents and premiums are similar to what I already was quoted