If I pay cash for a freehold terrace house do I legally need buildings insurance?

My house hasn't been insured for about 10 years. If it was somehow destroyed, I would build a new (and much better) house on the plot.

westv wrote: »

But a tent is easy to replace.

Sorry to hear that you live in a tent, we live in a 3 bed detached house? We would build a 4/5 bed detached house on the plot if it came to having to build.

Slithery wrote: »

But surely insurance is still a good idea, as you'd have the money from the payout to put towards construction costs.

I don't think insurance is value, because on top of the actual risk, you are also paying for the overheads and profit of the both the underwriter and the broker. Also if you did get a policy that you allowed you to build something different, it would probably be more expensive. Although that said, we are unlikely to live here much longer, we are currently looking for another house. But we probably won't get insurance for the next house anyway.

chappers wrote: »

Of course insurance isn't value if you never make a claim as it's money down the drain. But on the other hand you say that, if your house was destroyed you wouldn't care you would just build another better one in it's place.
Excuse my bluntness but do you have learning difficulties.
If you have no insurance then you will have to shoulder that cost, whereas an insurance policy would pay for that. A lifetimes worth of premiums for a 3 bedroom house probably wouldn't even get your rebuild off of the architects drawing board.
Even worse, what if some incident to do with your building caused serious injury to a member of the public. Do you have the wherewithal to cover any claim against you, a claim that could run into the high hundreds of thousands of pounds or above.

I'm a chartered quantity surveyor, working as a university lecturer (teaching quantity surveying), and I'm also a self made mulit-millionaire. No, I'm not excusing your bluntness, if one of us has learning difficulties, it must be you, because it certainly isn't me.

You are missing the point It isn't value because you are paying more than the actual risk, to put it in layman's terms it is like backing a 200/1 horse at 150/1, that is bad value, the value isn't anything to do with whether you claim or not, that is an unknown variable at the time of taking out insurance.

messes wrote: »

Yes, you may be paying more than the actual risk, although the odds of a disaster damaging your house are much better than playing the lottery.

However other less expensive events than total destruction like water damage, electrical fire are going to have a higher chance of occurance and you don't want to cover against these either?

Still unless I was sitting on a nice pot of money, and to be honest even if I was. I'd rather take the contribution of the insurance company to rebuilding into the mansion. After all the costs are relatively minor compared to all the other outlays of running a home.

That would be your choice, why can't I make mine? I am sitting on a 'nice pot of money', and I managed to do that because I can identify value. But it is nice to get a sensible response, instead of a troll asking me if I have learning difficulties. It isn't as if we are unaware of the risks that can occur, until recently we owned 8 London investment properties, but we sold 2 this year, so we still own 6, and I have been a landlord for over 26 years, in addition to that I am a chartered surveyor, so we know what we are doing with properties.

By the way, in my particular circumstances there wouldn't actually be any cost in the case of the 'worse case scenario'. I own a much smaller house than the building plot could normally justify, in fact, it was a marginal decision not to demolish and rebuild. I just don't need the money, otherwise I would have done so, and if we actually wanted to stay in Dorking, we would have.