Home Insurance Discussion

pandy12

Hi
I hope that i have posted this in the right section. I am wondering if someone can help me , i am with an insurance broker who i have been with for over 10 years, my home insurance needs to be renewed in January and its paid in full up until that time. I have just rented my house out and have asked for a quote for landlords insurance, the person who works for the brokers whom i have dealt with for the past 10 years took absolutely ages to get back with me with a quote (over 3 weeks) and after various calls prompting and reminders about them getting a quote, i was getting rather exasperated with them so I did do a quick check myself as i was getting fed up with waiting I and found much cheaper quotes that the figure to finally came back to me with which was a quote of £300 which matches my current insurance and has said that i need to pay this in full and i will get a refund on the house insurance that i have paid up until January, i asked him whether i could just swap with insurance over with my current company towergate so that i did not have to pay until January and he said that i could not do this. I said that i would try to find out. I do feel exasperated with the company as its taken him ages to get back to me and they also quoted my mum an extortionate amount for insurance for a car that she used to have. I rang Towergate to ask them for advise on swapping my insurance over but they said i would have to speak to my broker. I have decided i do not want to use their services anymore, please can someone advise. I usually pay them upfront for my insurance and i had a claim 5 years ago. many thanks for any suggestions. Pandy

badobsession81

I'm a bit confused by this statement and was hoping someone could clarify?

"Plus for contents, ensure you don’t under-insure. Add everything up including smaller items such as clothes, as go for £20,000 of cover when you've £40,000 worth and claim for, say, a £1,000 TV and you may only get a proportionate payout, ie 50%."

Why would claiming for a £1000 TV only result in a payout of 50%? In this example you may have only insured £20000, but why would this affect the payout of an individual item?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

gaily

In your scenario, the TV would probably get paid out in full.

The 'under insurance' issue raises it's head when you have a larger loss. If a loss adjuster has to come out to your home and sees that you have (for example) £50,000 of contents, but only insuring £10,000 of contents, then he may only pay out 20% of the claim.

If you had a total loss, then it may still be possible for insurers to ascertain a general level of contents - ie the burnt shell of your PS3, XBox, and 52 inch plamsa tv, in addition to your smoke damaged wardrobe full of designer clothes (which you can't wear again, so would need to claim for). They would be able to see that your contents were more than what you were insuring, and state that as you were only paying the premium for 50% of your belonging, you only get 50% of the payout. Not the arguement you want to be having if you had only the clothes you were wearing.

Also, if you're talking about the difference in insuring £20,000 to £40,000 contents, then it's probably only a few £ in premium, so you'd do far better to pay the extra. Also for the sums insured you're looking at, blanket cover may be abetter option. (Just watch the single article limits)

harz99

Hmm; renewal of Buildings and Contents with current insurer Direct Line £98, Aviva quote for same cover £166!

Free, I think not.:eek:

HeimRoller

Thank you MSE, followed the step by step guide.
Current quote was £790 for the year (house and contents). Needed to increase contents cover due to finding out the true value of some of the contents!
Quoted £390 by AXA at the increased cover levels! Went back to initial insurer and they dropped to £590 for no increased cover! So we have switched, earnt £33 cashback too (so long as it tracks). A saving of £400 for the year (added to the £450 for switching gas and elec) so some handy savings in time for Christmas!
Now to see what else I can save!

MiaC3000

Thanks 'Oscar The Gouch' for your advice.
My new quote is a "sum insured" figure... so I used the rebuild calculator you suggested to check the rebuild costs of my stone built house. But it is giving me a value that is double the sale value of the house... this doesn't seem right really and it makes a big difference to the premium. I think I have 3 obvious options:

• insure for sale value
• insure for double sale value based on the calculator
• pay £200 to a survey to get accurate amount

Surely I'll be sufficiently covered if I insure for the sale value?
Any thoughts anyone?

gaily

Sale value and rebuild value may have nothing to do with each other.

House prices may be dropping in various parts of the country, but rebuild figures aren't necessarily in the same way (I know people are saying that builders will cut their costs right down, but raw materials may not have dropped - especially not stone, which is a natural product)

A home in London may go for £500,000, but only be worth £200,000 on the market in Liverpool, Birmingham etc. The rebuild figure may be roughly the same in each case though.

Or a property may be on an island, and have a very low market value, but a huge rebuild, due to the availability of materials and labour - possibly having to be shipped over specially.

artybee

There's a minor typo on the page: I think you meant "home owner".

I don't normally point out typos for individual posts (I'm not that rude, and I make plenty myself) but for the content of the main website itself I thought it'd be worth a mention.

This is the first incarnation of our new system, where we split the best buys section into different types of driver. We'd love your feedback on if it worked for you and if there's anything you would change.

john1950

My house insurance is due for renewal in a couple of weeks time and I have some attractive (cheap) quotes but I am not sure that cheap is really the only factor.

The RBS brands (Privilige, Churchill, Direct Line etc.) are all at around £100 to £120. This is for a four bedroom house with minimal contents cover and never made a claim.

What is bothering me is that I have seen comments about house insurance that "you get what you pay for" and only using quality insurers. The cover being offerred is adequate for my needs and I am tempted to plump for Churchill.

Is there such a thing as a "quality insurer" and if so who are they.

I have lived in this house for twenty years and as I said have never made a claim. Always been a bit of a DIYer so have taken care of things like slipped tiles, burst pipes etc. Cannot do that sort of thing anymore, I got old. Need to be sure the insurance provider are reliable.

paa

I have a garage at a separate address to my house. I wish to take out just buildings insurance just for the garage...anyone know a company who will do this please?