Should you get home insurance and how much do you pay?

[ncob]

FTB, new home-owner. Seems like theres endless costs. Erring towards getting home insurance but have almost nothing of value at the moment (need to buy furniture etc, currently just have odd bits donated by friends/family to get by until I furnish the place). I guess I should just get buildings insurance? (and not contents)

Im mortgage free and have buildings insurance only...costs me about £100 a year....I have no contents of any significant value and as ive never made a claim in my life on any insurance policy its a risk im happy to take.

If you buy the insurance via Quidco you can get a good amount of cash back, I think I got £38 back on each policy this year.

I would never not have contents. Even if you have cheap stuff could you honestly afford to replace every single item you own?

We pay around £30 a month but that is the most comprehensive cover we could get, with added legal, accidental damage etc, items covered outside the home. You can get much cheaper than that if you want basic cover.

Are you a cash buyer, hence no buildings insurance already, unless the house is huge, unusual or on a flood plain you should be able to get a basic insurance quite cheaply and as PP says go through a cashback website

OP, if you don't get Buildings Insurance and a fire rips through the house and burns it down, how do you plan on repaying the bank for the mortgage on it and still fund somewhere else to live, and the repairs/demo/rebuild?

£200pa is a tiny amount to pay to take care of all the above and make sure you always have a home worth money.

OP, imagine that there is a fire and you lose every single thing in your house.

Write down a list of your belongings, doing each room in turn. This includes everything in that room, so clothes, shoes, jewellery, electronics, gadgets, personal belongings, all furniture, all bathroom and kitchen equipment. Also, carpets, curtains etc.

Could you afford to replace everything if you lost it all?

Make sure that you don't under insure either. We had contents insured for £25K and when an assessor came to look at the roof after a storm, after he had walked through the house, he said, I think you should up your contents cover. We do not own expensive items, this was just standard Argos type furniture.

Just a thought - you are not quite clear whether you are buying a house (freehold) or a flat (leasehold). In the case of a leasehold property, including share of freehold, the service charge will include a contribution to the building insurance so you only need contents cover.

As PP have said, this will often include cover for personal items outside the home such as phone, laptop, even possibly cash. If you are concerned about paying the premium of maybe £20 per month, how are you going to find the money to replace those in a hurry? Also, I once woke up to a leak from two floors above me which damaged the walls and carpet. Insurance covered the remedial works including new carpet throughout most of the flat because it had all matched and also a dehumidifier.

Incidentally, in case you haven’t realised, most providers allow you to pay by monthly direct debit so it becomes easier to budget for.

Also, you say you don’t have much at the moment but, realistically, how often are you going to take the time to review what the value of the contents is?

I don't have loads of valuable stuff but I just got a quote for £30,000 worth of cover and it's £7 a month. That also includes two pieces of high value jewellery that I wear outside of the house.

Your house insurance can cover things like bikes, wedding rings etc or accidental damage. Ultimately up to you but I think if a house burned down, it'd be good to know there was at least something in place to help replace the basics.

Try combined. I have good cover for £20 a month (pay by direct debit so it will be cheaper if you pay upfront).

Contents is also carpets / flooring etc which would cost a lot of money in a flood. Even a small fire is likely to damage beyond repair due to water from fire hoses.

Your mortgage lender will insist that you have buildings insurance to cover the risk of the building being destroyed.

You should get contents insurance even you don't have much in the way of furnishings. If the house burnt to the ground could you afford to replace all your clothes, toiletries, the carpets, curtains, white goods?

Standard cover for buildings and contents covers risks such as fire, theft, flood, storm. You should have that as a minimum.

Accidental damage does what it says on the tin. Spillages, dropped items, balls through windows...

@FarmGirl78

Ignore the poster who said about paying a fiver, that was just for contents as her son rented so it's s red herring.

That's rather rude. The OP already said she's looking at just getting buildings insurance and is asking whether she needs contents cover too, so the person posting about the cheap content cover for her son was absolutely relevant.

There's always someone on MN telling people to ignore other posts. It's they who should be ignored.

There is a saying that one should only insure against calamitous losses. Most people insure their house because if it is destroyed they need funds to rebuild it. For the same reason, mortgagees will require it so it becomes contractual.

Otherwise, it is not compulsory. I know of people who have zero insurance on their homes. Contents insurance follows the same rules. If the contents of your home are worth £1,000 is there really a need to insure? Similarly, if someone is rich and can replace £100,000 of contents from proverbial loose change down the back of their proverbial sofa do they really need to insure?

The real test is whether, in the absence of a legal requirement, it would be calamitous if you suffer an otherwise insurable loss. If so then insure. If there is no foreseeable calamity, save the money.

Not that it's an argument to skip contents cover, which is usually pretty cheap in the great scheme of things, but fitted kitchens and bathrooms are generally covered under the 'buildings' part of the policy, not contents. Flooring however is contents!

If money is tight, I'd select the most basic contents cover I could find, and not have accidental damage cover or cover for things outside the home, or for stuff in sheds/garages. That's what I have for my place in the Cotswolds, and it's under £100 a year.