How do you estimate the rebuild cost of your house for insurance purposes?

[Virgil]

I have no idea. Is it a percentage of market value or something or is it, as I suspect, completely unrelated to market value? Need to renew my buildings insurance and have no idea whether the figure is correct.

There should be a website that should give you an insurance rebuild amount.

It has nothing to do with market value.

I looked at my survey and there was a handy figure on there - do you have that to hand?

I've heard a lot of stuff about people over insuring due to confusing sale value and rebuild costs. Beware I lived in an old terrace house £38,000 sale value £86,000 (according to survey) rebuild costs - so that doesn't always hold true. I'm sure if you live in a nice area in a modern house it's different though.

If you live in a standard type fairly modern house you should be fine using an online calculator. Rebuild cost doesn't necessarily relate to market value at all. We live in an old grade 2 listed cottage - the surveyor estimated rebuild cost is more than £100k above what we paid and £200k more than the online calculator would think (largely because the listing would insist on more expensive methods and materials being used). If your house is unusual in any way then definitely get a surveyor to give you a figure and remember to either insurance company to Index-link that figure or review yourself every few years.

If your house is standard construction with no special features, you can get a rough idea of the rebuild value using a calculator: abi.bcis.co.uk/
It's always best to have a surveyor's opinion though, especially if you're not sure about certain aspects of the build - if you undervalue the rebuild costs insurance would only be paid up to the amount insured for, leaving you to cover any shortfall.

Two different surveyors set our rebuild value at £750,000 (which makes our insurance expensive) but the house has a sale value of £300,000. It's a listed and historic building, but there's no requirement for us to recreate any rebuild in the same character as it would be near-impossible and a new-build replica of our historical building would be meaningless.

Asked my insurer the same question last week as I was worried about being under-insured. She had a format (probably the same as an online one) and as we're in a standard type house, she could work it out.

Divine (sorry to hijack post) - may I ask how much your insurance premiums are? We're thinking of buying a Grade 2 listed house, purchase price around £320,000. Vendor says buildings and contents insurance is around £1500 a year . I got a quote from assetsure who supposedly specialise in listed buildings and the lady said the re-build cost would be less than the market value, and quoted me £400 a year for buildings/contents.
I mentioned that for listed buildings it's usually higher due to specialised materials etc and she seemed totally unaware! Slightly worried and confused

Ours was on our survey too.

For some unknown reason my parents always put £1million on theirs which must be why their insurance is so high. No way it would cost that much to rebuild a 4 bed semi.

Labracadabra - why not phone NFU for an insurance quote? They seem to be the standard 'go to' for listed buildings.

Yep, should be on mortgage valuation survey report if you can dig that out?

Yes - ours was on the survey. When I tried to get house insurance this year one of the insurance companies would'nt insure me as my rebuild valuation was so wildly different from their calculator. It didn't take into account it is a Victorain stone built house. I was insisting I was right and that if I took their bog standard insurance I would be grossly underinsured.
I am insured with More Than and our house rebuild is £625,000 and my insurance is around £1000 pa. More Than give you your contents for free. The other quates were nearer £1500.
I dread insurance time.

Quotes not quates. Doh.

Definitley get a specialist valuer and a specialist valuation for a listed building. It can easly cost much more to reconstruct a listed building than its market value.

For example, it is £30k for a hand made Georgian staircase if it burns down but £3k for a modern one.

I read it is around£200 - 250k to reconstruct a large modern 5 bed home.