Home insurance while doing an extension?

[holachicatita]

We are currently about to start work on a large extension to our property. Mortgage approved but before funds can be released we need to have 'Buildings in the course of construction insurance.' I've priced around and most companies don't offer it and one quoted me £3000!! Anyone any idea of anywhere I can get this at a reasonable price?

To start with: I am no expert and this is just a thought. I am sure some other MNer will know much more than me, but to start the conversation off: I wonder if you talk to your builder / construction contractor. They must have insurance for the work they are doing? Am just wondering if you can show that you are working with someone with appropriate insurance it might lower the price. We did an extension and didn't think to check if we needed insurance (we did) and work up one very very windy night suddenly panicking that the roof would blow off. It didn't, we were fine. But we basically didn't know so just didn't do anything and we were super lucky nothing went wrong. More recently we had works done but the "risk" to the house sat with the contractor. (But we didn't choose the cheapest contractor because of this.)

We don't have a contractor. We are project managing it ourselves and it's being overseen by the architect? If that helps?

Is the architect selecting the builders / plumbers etc or are you? Have you asked them about insurances?

We finished our extension a couple of years ago so this may be out of date, but we used AXA. They didn't care that we were extending and it didn't cost more due to the building works themselves, but we did increase the house value at the start of the project to the end value iyswim, so that whatever point we were at we would be covered up to that point. We took photos as we went. Obviously increasing the house value raised the premium slightly. I think it was about £560/year. We live in a low crime area though.

We’ve just done an extension and talked to our insurance company who asked likely end date and charged us some extra. No idea if the extra has a name but it was to cover any problems around the work being done

I spoke to our existing house insurer and they altered the cover during the extension. I expected it to cost money but they were actually more concerned with saying they wouldn't cover certain things such as items left outside and buildings contents while unlocked etc.

Building work is expensive though. If the project is particularly large or you wanted insurance cover for absolutely everything during the work, 3k might not be ridiculous?

I had major works/extension done to my house 8/9 years ago. We just spoke to our existing buildings insurance provider and upped our cover to include the building works. I can't remember how much we paid - but it wasn't a huge amount.

The contractors etc will have their own Insurance that will cover lots (including public liability etc) but you also need your own cover.

Call you existing insurer. Mine didn’t charge any extra. I had been with them for 10 years and they were a mid priced policy (not the cheapest off money supermarket etc).

I was very lucky and I reckon it saved me 10k - 15k in insurance. I have friends who have paid 3k a month as their insurer said no. Mine didn’t cover any of their tools etc and it didn’t cover materials left on the site (so bricks in stacks). But my home was insured as standard. We had to call them monthly with updates and as it was during the time there were material shortages it over ran significantly

We had an extension started two years ago. We asked the broker, who does our house insurance to get us the extra cover. We had to answer lots of questions about whether we were going to leave the house empty, the scaffolding, if the builders were going to be doing anything hot, etc. We had to pay £2,000 for it.

Your builders’ insurers won’t cover you, if someone breaks in through the big hole in the wall (they boarded it up at night, but as they removed it quite easily the next morning, so could someone else) for example.

Thanks everyone, my existing insurer won't cover me as the works are in excess of £75000. So have to find a new company that will take us on.. maybe a broker is a good idea!