Home insurance - what do we need to know?

[casaberry]

Our purchase is moving along. Our solicitor says things look good so far and we've booked a survey for later this month. If all continues going well, we're hoping to exchange by mid-August.

Is now the time to start thinking about home insurance?

Any recommendations for where to go for this?

Things to think about?

How do you determine how much to insure for? We're buying a 5-bedroom house in London.

Try several comparison sites - they all have different affiliations and will often price their own related companies cheaper. I usually try and quote on three.

They will automatically calculate how much cover you need for things like rebuild cost from the number of rooms, bedrooms etc it will ask you to put in.

Answer all questions truthfully as some will get your insurance cancelled if they are found out to be untrue (such as having had ccj's).

Work out if you want buildings and contents or just buildings by looking at what contents covers. Personally I am happy self insuring my contents but many do like both.

Then I'd usually set my excess highish - few hundred pound to bring the quote down (it's generally not worth claiming on small losses anyway) and then pick the cheapest quote regardless of company. If the difference is small I might pay and extra £10-£20 to go with a name like LV or someone who sounds like they might have good customer service.

Thanks for this. We're getting very close to exchanging now so need to decide on insurance.

Is it generally a good idea to add the home emergency cover, or are there other independent services that we might want to consider instead?

How about the legal cover -- is that something that's usually good to add in? We don't foresee having to do any major work on the house, so unlikely to need party wall agreements, etc. But we might put solar panels up if possible.

I think we're fine with just buildings cover. But I don't think that would cover appliances -- so maybe we just get the extended warranty on new fridge, etc, rather than insure contents too.

Grateful for any advice!

Personally legal cover you do need. It doesn’t just cover you for home related things either. Emergency cover is something I have personally just added for peace of mind. Good luck in your home :)

Definitely legal cover. If there’s a dispute with an employer, neighbour etc and you need advice or heaven forbid something beyond that, and you have a 51% chance of
success if you issue legal proceedings, my understanding is that they’ll usually fund the majority of the hourly rate of the lawyer used.

We don’t ever purchase Home Emergency now after we were royally done over by Swinton & Homeserve. 2 years to replace a showertray resulting in one row of tiles being replaced, which they mucked up so we then needed a new internal bathroom wall, to a new complete suite.
We ended up suing them!

TopCashBack is usually good for price comparisons & photograph receipts for all valuable objects.

@casaberry
Always study the fine print regardless of what the sales person tries to say

Find out the accurate rebuild cost should the very worst happen.

We’re moving to a bigger house and for the first time we’ve used an insurance broker rather than a comparison website. It’s been very instructive to have her advice, particularly on the level of cover we need for contents (we had massively underestimated) and the small print of the policies (eg new for old cover, whether they cover you if you accidentally got something wrong in the application, etc). Our premium has gone up, but the cover we have has too, and the personal service we’ve received is so different from speaking to someone in a call centre.

I’m happy to pass on her details via PM if anyone wants: I’m not on commission!

if you have a mortgage then your mortgage provider will insist on Building insurance but your contents cover is optional. I have never believed my contents to be optional. If you have a fire or a flood could you replace everything that you own with ease? If not, insure. My parents lost everything in a fire when I was a child which I remember vividly still 40 years later.