Homeowners. Have any of you not renewed buildings insurance cover?

[girlfriend44]

Thinking of giving it a miss this year. No choice really.

Have paid building insurance for years. Nothings ever happened.

I simply can't afford it.
Insurance is such a rip off.
Not going to be too outing but it's gone up one thousand three hundred pounds in a year. No claims in the last five years. In fact never claimed.
Simply cannot afford this, along with everything else.

An increase like that is pure greed.😡
One thousand, three hundred.in a year.
Anyone else not have it?

Insanity. My in laws made this foolish choice, house burnt to the ground in a fire. They only received contents insurance. Ended up living with family for almost 4 years while rebuilding. None of the relationships have fully recovered almost 10 years later. I cannot imagine their finances are great either.

No, and it's not a good idea. There is a huge risk in the time you are not insured, then when you try to restart you'll be unable to answer about your previous insurer. As the property was insured by you before, this will lead to underwriter referral and likely higher costs.

More than one company offers building insurance, get yourself an insurance broker to shop around if you have a specialist building and don't know your options.

Quite honestly you are either fibbing or have a house worth millions. We have a seven figure house and ours is a quarter of what you have quoted.

Ditto Policy Expert. We are with them.

What? I have literally never been asked for previous insurers details when changing house insurance. I use the major comparison sites and none ask.

it may not be sensible not to insure, but it is a homeowners choice. It’s no business of a future insurers and there is no reason for them to financially penalise you for that decision with future premiums.

@MichaelandKirk there are loads of reasons why the premium could be so high

Mine has just gone up a bit, I pay £700 a year with Swinton for a 3 bedroom semi in the SW.
I suppose it all depends on excesses, all the finer details etc, contents...
always good to shop around though 👌

I can understand where OP is coming from.

I live in a block of 9 flats managed by a factor (as we call them in Scotland).

The renewal quote arranged by the factor is £1100ish per resident per year!!! Because there have been annual claims for water ingress eg blocked drains, flooding neighbours below.

this is for flats worth around 300-330K, not detached houses or mansions.

there is absolutely no way I am paying that and will organise my own, through a broker.

Look at other providers, but don’t let it lapse. Fire and flood happen to anyone

Im in the building trade, insurance jobs are more frequent than people think, smaller jobs of course you could cover yourself, but something major, particularly fire costs a fortune to put right.

Fire is I would say the worst, a keen DIYer can get a house that has been flooded inhabitable (albeit not very decorative) in a week by cleaning out, removing floor coverings and removing the plaster to the tide line, but fire damage is very difficult to clean up, even getting rid of the soot in un burned areas is a specialist job.

To fully remediate either is 10s of thousands.

Good lord, my combined contents and buildings insurance on a 4-bedroom house is less than £20 a month.

@MichaelandKirk our policy went up by over £1000 and not all
insura companies would covee. We could
not do it on a comparison site as no one qould cover including policy expert. So it is feasible OP telling the truth

Don’t be daft. There is no way I would skip that.

If you can afford to lose your home and all the equity in it if it burns down , cancel the cover. If not, find other costs to cut.

I’m a lawyer and had a case once where a house burned down and the husband died in the fire. His young grieving widow, who was a SAHM with no earning capacity, then discovered that husband had not renewed the building insurance, so she and her children were homeless as well as grieving. It was absolutely horrendous and still think about her to this day (17 years later).

“Nothing’s ever happened” is a rather foolish statement. The whole point of insurance is to cover unexpected and unpredictable events.

I don’t understand this

fir my 1.5m house and 75k contents the buildings and contents insurance is 400 a year

i get area etc will make a difference but with no mortgage to pay you should be able to pay Insurance

but up to you op but don’t start moaning that you’ve lost everything and it’s everyone else’s fault when something happens to your house. You want to risk it, fill your boots. Your choice but you’d be mad to

I'm not sure what you think an insurance company does, but in real life the risk you pose quite literally is the business of the insurance company. The reasons for non insurance are relevant to your risk profile; you may or may not be asked. Data about your property does not only come from questions you complete, but from augmentation too, e.g. CUE.

DF lived in a block of flats and there was a fire in the roof space caused by an electrical fault. Forty six flats were affected and his insurance paid for him to rent another flat for over 2 years until the repairs to his own building were completed. Insurance is not something I would go without.

No, but it would be interesting to understand why it was perceived as such a high risk that it cost £3k to insure.

OPs post seems to be more of a rant about high insurance rather than actually saying anything about why there is this increase, maybe to make the thread longer with people asking questions and not answering them.

Time to move unfortunately.

If you can't protect (through insurance) your biggest asset, then you need to lessen the value of this asset so that you are fully protected and able to live. ( you said you had already cut everything else possible).

Not sure why you would even take the risk, it would cost significantly more than £1300 to rebuild your house, although that does sound expensive for buildings insurance. The sensible option would be maybe get a 0% credit card or an overdraft and slowly spread the cost on that if you're not able to pay it all in one go.

To answer your question, when money was very tight I might have been tempted. We certainly didn’t have contents insurance for years. Fortunately our mortgage required it so no choice.

I understand your thinking but it is such a big risk. You would leave yourself so exposed. That £1,300 would buy you nothing in terms of labour or materials if you had, say, storm damage.

Please don't risk it. I'm a solicitor dealing with a case where a couples self built dream home has burnt down. They had no insurance as they wanted to save a bit after spending a lot on the build. Now they have NO MONEY to rebuild it, no contents, no funds for alternative accommodation, all of which building and contents insurance should have covered.

Definitely no for most as the majority will have a mortgage and so it's a requirement. I would have it anyway. Building damage is something that's almost completely out of your own control and so insurance is all you have against the loss of your biggest asset. I had to make a claim recently after the big storm and was surprised just how expensive even a relatively small repair was - thousands of pounds. Similar for a relative who had a small fire caused by a battery.

we really struggled to find anyone to insure us this year and have gone with a broker in the end. Up from £900 to £4000 this year. I’m on several property forums and this seems to be typical.

I wouldn’t risk not having it though.

Change constantly as can always find a cheaper new policy rather than renewing.