How often does someone claim on buildings insurance?

[boxesboxes]

It's time to purchase buildings insurance, and I'm not sure what level to set the excess at. How often do people actually claim buildings insurance? I've never done it in the ten years I've owned properties, but that's not to say it doesn't happen all the time and I've just been lucky? It's an Edwardian semi detached house.

Thank you!

There have been a few incidents where thieves have stolen the entire contents of a property when the owners were away. Being so tight over a policy costing maybe a £ or so a day is false economy. Maybe you don’t care.
We’ve been burgled twice and claimed on accidental damage once.
Just pay the extra £25.
That’s called sweating the small stuff.

Whoa the extra £25?? In my head it's like another £200 a year. I'll investigate.

Do you have to itemise everything first, including where you got it from and its likely replacement cost?

Forget about being burgled. If you have a fire or flood, you may have to replace everything you own from scratch. If you can't afford to do that, you need contents cover.

We've claimed once in 35 years. It was for some missing roof tiles in the 1987 storms. That's it.

@boxesboxes

Thanks all! I'm not suggesting not taking out buildings insurance btw - it's just working out what level to set the excess at. £250 was the default I think, and I was wondering whether to increase to £500.

I don't intend to get home contents insurance. Is that a mistake? We've never had it and never been burgled.

I would always get buildings and contents insurance. The contents could add up to a huge sum when you add it all up. No way could be afford to replace it ourselves if there was a fire or similar. It's not like we have expensive tastes or nice jewellery either.

We didn't have to list items or say when and where we bought them. Just whether you own costly appliances over a certain value. I think they would only want more info if you own exceptionally expensive things including art or jewellery.

I have been a home owner for 32 years and have never claimed.

@boxesboxes

A fire is so unlikely though, isn't it? We'll have an induction hob too. Flooding may be more likely I suppose...

A fire is not that unlikely, why would you think that? I can assure you that house fires happen regularly - old electrics, dryers catching fire, items left plugged in and over heating etc. Not to mention the candles/Christmas tree lights/cheapo plug in xmas decorations that keep me very busy through the month of December (I work in insurance).

Regarding contents bear in mind that even a fire that doesn’t burn your house down can cause extensive damage. Even in cases where the fire has been limited to one or two rooms, the smoke travels through the property and causes a lot of damage, often destroying furnishings, bedding, clothing and so on.

If you’re not going to claim for minor stuff then select the higher excess but it’s foolish not to have contents insured so put whatever you save from selecting that excess towards contents cover.

I've been a home owner for 40 years and have never claimed. Building insurance is there for major incidents.

Ours is £200 because for anything less than that we wouldn't claim and it's an amount we could afford to cover of we did have to, touch wood we've not had to claim so far. We also have an Edwardian semi!

Oh actually that's not true when I lived in my flat my cat deliberately pushed my laptop off the kitchen counter onto the tiled floor, I watched him but didn't get to him in time. Luckily my insurance covered it as accidental damage! (Tesco value insurance even came with blue and white striped leaflets)

DH has worked in insurance a long time. When he did domestic, the most common devastating loss was actually due to water - imagine coming home from a weekend away and the water tank in your loft / mains cold has burst and so all the ceilings are down and every single thing you own is soaked through, covered in wet plaster and now mouldering. And all you have is what is in your weekend case. That is what contents insurance is for! Imagine having to go out and buy everything, with no time to wait for sales, look for second hand etc - you need clothes to wear even, right now. It adds up terribly quickly. And contents insurance will pay to try and rescue the irreplaceable, so he had a contractor who would try and dry out family photos, recover hard drives and so on

@CMOTDibbler

DH has worked in insurance a long time. When he did domestic, the most common devastating loss was actually due to water - imagine coming home from a weekend away and the water tank in your loft / mains cold has burst and so all the ceilings are down and every single thing you own is soaked through, covered in wet plaster and now mouldering. And all you have is what is in your weekend case. That is what contents insurance is for! Imagine having to go out and buy everything, with no time to wait for sales, look for second hand etc - you need clothes to wear even, right now. It adds up terribly quickly. And contents insurance will pay to try and rescue the irreplaceable, so he had a contractor who would try and dry out family photos, recover hard drives and so on

This happened to me - except that I was very lucky that I was only renting a room in the house short-term, so only had a couple of suitcases of stuff there. But everything had to be chucked and replaced, as the water was contaminated with sewage.

Even 2 suitcases of bog-standard high street clothes and a cheapo IBM laptop cost several grand to replace from new - and that was in the late 90s.

@boxesboxes

This might be a naive question, but what do burglars tend to steal? It's a £1.4m period house in London (not stealth brag, honestly, just setting the scene) but we're frugal people and don't have fancy tech or jewellery. Do they steal TVs? Furniture?

NDN had watches and jewellery stolen and the laptop was ignored, down the road had bikes stolen, these were separate burglaries. I'm not sure if TVs are as popular now to steal as they are often very large and fairly heavy. DH has lots of cameras and associated stuff which would probably be attractive to steal.

We claimed once about 20 years ago when TV aerial blew off the roof in high winds as we had to get a new one put on the roof.

You've all frightened me. I will get contents insurance 🍀

The items you generally have to list are bicycles over a certain amount (£500-£1000) and specific high risk items over £2-3k. High risk usually means jewellery, tech, art, cameras etc

Is your house old OP, or listed?

Rebuilding costs aren't necessary the same as purchase price.

If you have a house that cost £4m to rebuild, but you insured it for £2m (keeping numbers simple here), if you have a flood that costs £10k to fix, you are unlikely to get it paid in full as you are underinsured.

This might be worth reading through:

www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/complaints-deal/insurance/home-buildings-insurance/underinsurance-home-insurance-complaints

I know about rebuild costs. For my current flat, we had to state the rebuild cost. This time, Admiral didn't ask. They have the address so assume they have certain assumptions for the type of house, etc.

Get the extra cover for find and trace water leaks: it covers repairing the damage from tracking down annoying minor leaks where you might need to go into walls or floors. Just learned to our cost we didn’t have it when we thought we did… Actual plumbing work was tuppence ha’penny; the mega cost is repairing the fucking floor

The only time we have had a burglary it was an attempted one disturbed by my neighbour. They spotted them from their upstairs window trying to break into our garage. It was 6am in the morning they had hit the 4 houses in our row of 5. They were junkies (caught further up the village trying to break into the dentists half an hour later). We were all in our houses at the time.
They didn't manage to steal anything from us but they caused a lot of damage. Cut camera and light electrics, ripped lights off the wall, smashed into the shed and bent the metal garage door trying to prise it open. We didn't bother claiming on the insurance as we could fix most of it fairly cheaply but our neighbours all had to, they lost tools, bikes, scuba gear, outdoors stuff but it added up, plus the property damage that occurred whilst they did it.

Voluntary £0 always on any insurance.

I just wouldn't consider not having contents insurance. I've only got a 1 bed house but when you start adding up what it would cost to replace everything its eye watering.

FTEngineer - do you mean always set the voluntary excess to £0? Why's that, seeing the likelihood of having to claim is low, and if a claim does happen, the costs we're talking about will dwarf £250 or £500 or whatever the excess is?

Remember contents can also cover contents away from the home, so if your car gets broken into for example.

My handbag got nicked from a London restaurant a few years ago including house keys and license with address so insurance covered the replacement lock and bag plus contents which alone were more than £400.

And it's worth getting the legal advice add on. It's a tiny cost but is so helpful for all manner of situations, not just relating to the property. (Unless you already have this elsewhere)

Thanks Maggie - when have you used the legal support, if you don't mind me asking? I honestly can't think when I'd need this urgently!