Block flat insurance - is it really necessary?

omendata · 5 August 2018 at 7:05PM

I currently live in a block of 1960's flats with a flat roof - 6 of them each owned by its residents and we all have individual insurance for our flats.

One of our resident has said he just discovered that we have it wrong and we should all be paying a communal block insurance that covers the entire building - We have a communal stairwell with front and back doors.

The building is also connected to another block of 6 flats with their separate entrances identical to our so surely it would need all 12 flats to be insured on the same communal insurance - quite a tricky conundrum!

From what i understand from trawling the net that is not true and all that is necessary is to have each individual make sure their insurance has individual indemnity

Any advice appreciated.

paddyandstumpy · 5 August 2018 at 7:07PM

Is the flat in England/Wales or Scotland?

omendata · 5 August 2018 at 7:52PM

Sorry should have mentioned SCOTLAND and we self factor so we pay what is necessary for gardener etc into a common fund to be paid for any workmen we employ to do any jobs!

Owain_Moneysaver · 5 August 2018 at 9:40PM

You don't have to have a block insurance policy.

Every flat must (by law, in Scotland) be covered by insurance. It may well be cheaper to get a block policy as, with individual policies, each insurer has to assume some risk that other flats aren't insured or policies won't pay out, so you may have some element of duplicated cover with separate policies.

If you do want to try a block policy I'm fairly sure you can get one on your block (close) even if there's a party wall with another block. Otherwise every close in a terrace street would have to be under the same policy, which doesn't happen.

Neil_Money_saver · 17 August 2018 at 3:51PM

Is this the same in England?

We live in a converted house in London and when we bought we were told we needed to get one building policy for the house rather than three separate building policies. If it is needed are there some recommendations for places to go for quotes? In the past the mainstream insurance companies don't seem to want to cover it implying we need landlord insurance

dacouch · 17 August 2018 at 9:29PM

Neil_Money_saver wrote: »

Is this the same in England?

We live in a converted house in London and when we bought we were told we needed to get one building policy for the house rather than three separate building policies. If it is needed are there some recommendations for places to go for quotes? In the past the mainstream insurance companies don't seem to want to cover it implying we need landlord insurance

Try a local broker although avoid Swinton.

There are plenty of decent Insurers that offer reasonable prices and good cover so don't settle for a cheapo Insurer.

What do you think will happen if you kept the status quo and after a large fire or a subsidence claim you had to deal with four seperate Insurers.... I can tell you it would drag on for ages and would be a total head ache.

You would generally have the policy issued in the names of all four home owners.

Pay attention to the excess as they can be higher than a normal home policy but it's possible to get a reasonable price and low excess if you shop around

PasturesNew · 17 August 2018 at 9:40PM

With separate insurances you all have to trust everybody else has got theirs... and what if the guy in the middle hasn't and the one bottom left's under-insured.... then you're stuck with two "holes" in your major rebuild.

At least if there's a problem with a block insurance you're all waiting for the same date/paperwork and resolving the same problems, together.... not trying to rebuild "your bit" round the bloke whose insurance had lapsed... and the one who under-insured and is about to go bankrupt anyway so doesn't care.

There's a lot of "stuff" that joins all the flats together .... that's just as important to get done in one go as getting all the flats done in one go... with different insurances paying out at different times for different amounts any major catastrophe could find you taking 3-4 years to get back into your home... with lots of arguments about costs/methods etc.

Block flat insurance - is it really necessary?

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free