Building insurance when renovating

[lamandler]

We have exchanged today (gulp) and I need to urgently sort out insurance. We are renovating and doing a loft conversion so we will stay in rented for a few months.

I am having real trouble getting insurance and I am worried now! Can anyone help?! Standard won't work as property is unoccupied (unless there is a way to circumvent this), and specialist won't insure short term because we live in a flood area (although most of London is a flipping flood area).

I am sure there is an answer, I am just too panicked to think straight!

House is only a few doors from our rented by the way, so we will be on site a lot.

We got ours through our insurance broker - H&R insurance in Aberdeen. There are specialist products out there - ours was a Brit Insurance Product - for renovations - insures you for Employer Liability, tools on site, OK with empty property and various lengths of policy too . There are products out there - do not fret.

BTW you may need to know square meterage before you ring.

Thanks for that, having trouble with specialist too though. Starting to panic now

Have you tried Self Build Zone? We were in a similar position, and used them. We didn't claim, so I can't tell you if they are any good! But we couldn't get anyone else to insure us, as the extension was large. I seem to remember you had to start renovation within three months, but I might be wrong.

Go and see a proper insurance broker on Monday - they will be able to organise for you, plenty of companies do policies for that sort of risk, but are only available through a good brokerage.

Am in a similar situation, exchanging on a property for development this week. I spoke to our normal insurers, NFU Mutual, this morning and they can do it no problem.

Our builder has his own Employer's insurance etc, but they could have added that in if we needed it.

HTH

I have just got a quote from Renovation Plan (google them). Still waiting on some other quotes though

One way to get round the short term is to insure for the year, but then convert it to ordinary household insurance when you move in. Our broker - green insurance - suggested this for us and it worked out much cheaper.

Direct Line insured us in same situation, but only for forst 6 months or a year (can't remember which, sorry). After that we moved tp NatWest were happy to do it for longer.

We were offered the option of either 6 or 9 months.