First House Insurance claim refused

[Lillipops]

I'll try to be brief with this one. Bought our first home moved in 9th August, 3 weeks in and bad storm we had water pouring in thru the bathroom ceiling luckily into the shower cubicle. Called emergency assist on home insurance and they sent a roofer out the next day. Roofer came and condemned the roof, moss growth etc end of life yadda yadda, upshot is we had to replace the roof. New roof on yay! Fast forward 3 weeks and then we have water pouring from the front of the house coming from the bathroom. So water from roof has been going behind the shower, rotted the plasterboard so tiles have become loose and water from shower is leaking. So get a quote through from a plumber send it off to insurance company and they are saying it's not covered as would be pre existing as moss growth doesn't happen within 3 weeks. Home report gave a 2 for the roof which states ongoing maintenance required with eventual replacement required...we were not expecting to spend £5k on a new roof and £1500 to repair the damage to the bathroom within 3 weeks of moving in. Does anyone have any experience of this and is it worth challenging the home insurance or the previous owners as they clearly knew about the issues when they sold the house? Or do we just write it off as the joys of being home owners?

If you didn't know about the potential leaking roof when you bought, why do you think the previous owners "clearly knew about the issue when they sold the house"? It's buyer beware I'm afraid. Insurance companies will decline to pay for repairs where it's caused by wear and tear / old age essentially as the item (roof, fitting etc.) has come to the end of its natural life.

At least you know you're starting with a newly plastered bathroom and newly tiled roof, but not something you can appeal.

If you didn’t realise I don’t know why you’d imagine the previous owners would have. We had a similar thing happen in our bathroom but it was a leaky pipe and happened very slowly until one day it was too much water and it started to come through the ceiling downstairs. There was no way we would have spotted it before. I think you’ve been unfortunate in the amount of rain we’ve had recently, it’s just wear and tear and could have happened anytime.

It’s really annoying and expensive but I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault sorry.

You bought the house as it was. The damage is not covered by insurance. There really is no one to blame... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yeah I think we are going to have to suck this one up folks. The previous owners were super quick to sell, we were the first ones to view after it was advertised online for literally 30 mins. They immediately accepted our offer. Upshot is it's our perfect house in our favourite location so we have a lot to be thankful for 🙂

To be fair, a “2” rating for the roof indicates that a replacement is needed, or at the very least extensive repairs; this was flagged up at your survey.