Listed Building Insurance

[cherrytree63]

So I'm hoping to exchange contracts on my house purchase within the next couple of days.
It's a Grade 2 listed cottage, and I'm looking for any recommendations for insurance companies (and any to avoid)!

....weeks not days!

Ours is through our mortgage provider the nat west. You do need to speak to them and go through a questionnaire, I don't think many just do it on line if the building is listed, and they need a lot of info, like the rebuild costs etc if I remember correctly. It's fine, but it was an extra step past the normal anyone will insure it.

Thanks, I'm a cash purchaser but I may ask my previous mortgage provider who I had insurance with (Santander), I hadn't thought of that.
How would I find out the cost of rebuilding?

NFU we're good for our listed house.

Thanks Daffodil

For the rebuildng cost, this should be in the survey report. Another option is to ask the sellers which company they insure with and look at using the same one. Hope exchange goes smoothly!

Thanks. My offer was accepted 12 weeks ago, considering I'm a cash buyer and the house is empty I thought I'd be in ages ago, and suddenly it's all systems go!

You have to give the rebuild cost for ANY type of building insurance.
Insurance for grade two listing is not at all difficult to obtain, nor particularly different from normal house insurance, you will be able to get it from all of the main insurers.

You should have got a rebuild value when you did a survey (assuming you did as a cash buyer).

We used Lark Insurance who had a specialist Listed Buildings policy. If we did ever have a problem that required building works I didnt want the hassle of trying to negotiate with the Councils heritage officer and an 'ordinary' insurance company.

Grade II isn't too much hassle. Ours is with the co-op, but arranged through a comparison site. Some insurers won't quote, but it still wasn't too bad

If you want to cut the hassle of doing it yourself it's worth going through a decent broker - we do, and they're great. Our house isn't listed, by some bizarre quirk as it's about 400 years old and we live in a historic area (I think they just missed it the day they were going round the village doing the listings ), but we wanted good insurance.

Does using a broker add much to the premiums?

No using a broker allows them to search all companies and they can also advise on who is good to use in the event of a claim.

No should be cost effective.

We didn't find it more expensive OP. We've changed a few times year to year as our broker has found better deals for us and it saves having to do all the tedious research ourselves.

Thanks for all your help

We also use Lark Insurance. Have found them to be very good with specialist listed building policy. Very efficient when we had to make a claim. No complaints.