[Finance] Buildings and contents insurance

[Thunder Bolt]

Flood risk?
It would appear that many insurance companies have amended / changed their flood risk modelling, and have seriously increased their costs as a result. See https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-op-home-insurance-has-almost-tripled-to-1353 as just one example.
The answer seems to be to shop around for an insurer that takes a different view on flood risk.
It may be easier to go to the sites for a few specific insurers rather than one of the comparison websites, if you are having trouble getting them to accept the valuation - Which Magazine reccommends Churchill, Direct Line, Ecclesiastical, NFU Mutual, Privilege, Saga, Salvation Army (!), and Royal Bank of Scotland.
(Possibility of flood risk being the cause for the jump is because of your 'Beside the Seaside) line in your profile, and I think that you have said befoe that you are in the Seaford area? Apologies if mistaken.)
Final thought - is there a multiplier on the valuation part of the comparison website - e.g. are they asking for your house value in tens of thousands of pounds, so for a £300K house you would enter '30' - if you enter 300,000 and the website multiplies by 10K, then it will be out of range?
Edit - it should be obvious, but I do not work in insurance

I had looked at Which and spotted the NFU and Salvation Army recommends. Thanks.

We didn't have a flood as such, but the inlet pipe seeped water into our concrete floor, which in turn, affected our kitchen units which were old, not having the plastic feet, which modern ones do.

 

[cloud]

I had looked at Which and spotted the NFU and Salvation Army recommends. Thanks.

We didn't have a flood as such, but the inlet pipe seeped water into our concrete floor, which in turn, affected our kitchen units which were old, not having the plastic feet, which modern ones do.

Making an assumption here, but if you're over 50 you could try Saga, their rates are usually good

 

[Seagull on the Hill]

I paid £260 last year, for buildings and contents insurance, on a 4 bed semi detached house.
The renewal notice is due any day, hopefully it hasn't risen to the amount that the OP has been quoted.

 

[Weststander]

Flood risk?
It would appear that many insurance companies have amended / changed their flood risk modelling, and have seriously increased their costs as a result. See https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-op-home-insurance-has-almost-tripled-to-1353 as just one example.
The answer seems to be to shop around for an insurer that takes a different view on flood risk.
It may be easier to go to the sites for a few specific insurers rather than one of the comparison websites, if you are having trouble getting them to accept the valuation - Which Magazine reccommends Churchill, Direct Line, Ecclesiastical, NFU Mutual, Privilege, Saga, Salvation Army (!), and Royal Bank of Scotland.
(Possibility of flood risk being the cause for the jump is because of your 'Beside the Seaside) line in your profile, and I think that you have said befoe that you are in the Seaford area? Apologies if mistaken.)
Final thought - is there a multiplier on the valuation part of the comparison website - e.g. are they asking for your house value in tens of thousands of pounds, so for a £300K house you would enter '30' - if you enter 300,000 and the website multiplies by 10K, then it will be out of range?
Edit - it should be obvious, but I do not work in insurance

I’ve a client with commercial property in Newhaven, the buildings insurance has risen steeply due to perceived flood risk.

 

[PeterOut]

I had looked at Which and spotted the NFU and Salvation Army recommends. Thanks.

We didn't have a flood as such, but the inlet pipe seeped water into our concrete floor, which in turn, affected our kitchen units which were old, not having the plastic feet, which modern ones do.

That is possibly going to link your property with the word 'flood' - I was thinking more of external flood risk (from sea / river / heavy rainfall), which is why I was thinking of trying a different company that takes a different view on the risk of your property being flooded. I will repeat, I am no expert at all, but I believe that different insurers use different predictions of your location being likley to be flooded by external events.
Good luck!

 

[South Stand Bonfire]

I've just received a quote from our normal insurers which has bizarrely doubled in price from last year. It did go up last year, which I expected as we had a small claim two years previously, but we have gone four years now since a claim.
I have tried to fill in online forms but when it came to the value of the house, I used a figure which a neighbour's house sold for in January of this year, which it refuses to accept.
I know that rebuilding costs are generally exaggerated in insurance quotes so I am not going to use an inflated price.
It's the only claim we have made in the 21 years we have lived here.
House owner, no mortgage, 3 bed end terrace, two adults.

Has anyone got any recommendations for good insurers, please?

That sounds a bit odd. If you use the comparison websites most of them just ask for the number of bedrooms and other rooms and then will put your house in a standard rebuilding cost range. The value of your house is totally different to the reinstatement cost so I would shop around using the comparison sites. Mine went up by 20% in February so I shopped around and got better cover for a very slightly lower cost. Unfortunately you have to do that every year as they othwerise just rack their prices up. A couple of years ago I had to phone up the AA after my father in law passed away, to take him off his car breakdown insurance that he held jointly with his wife. When they tried to charge extra for taking him off the policy I gave them my frank and full opinion!

 

[Nitram]

Try Policy Expert, ours is up for renewal a larger house than yours but £266. Up from £196 last year. I tried the comparison sites and it still comes out as a reasonable quote. We had a claim 3 years ago.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I use a broker rather than the comparison sites, and I know they are more expensive as their choices are limited and they charge a fee on top. However they were very good when I cancelled the policy by mistake one year and couldn't get another one on my own, got rid of a possible subsidence issue on the house (because it wasn't subsidence but try telling insurance companies that when there is a crack in the brickwork), and sorting a temporary car insurance issue.

Not looking forward to the renewal quote though

Try this https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/home-insurance/calculating-rebuild-costs/

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I’ve a client with commercial property in Newhaven, the buildings insurance has risen steeply due to perceived flood risk.

I’m up the hill about 100 feet above sea level! I hope they’re not lumping all BN9 properties together!

 

[Zeberdi]

I use Ecclesiastical

Absolutely brilliant. Never turned down a claim, very generous payouts with emergency cover included, surveyors reports, tracing leaks, legal fees too among other things.

Very expensive though - I pay around £480 a year for combined Buildings and Contents.

With insurance companies, you get what you pay for tbh.

 

[South Stand Bonfire]

I’m up the hill about 100 feet above sea level! I hope they’re not lumping all BN9 properties together!

That’s all well and good, but are your locks BS3968 part 2 section 3a subsection iii compliant?

 

[Thunder Bolt]

That’s all well and good, but are your locks BS3968 part 2 section 3a subsection iii compliant?

Yes, both front and back door are brand new in the last two years!

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I use Ecclesiastical

Absolutely brilliant. Never turned down a claim, very generous payouts with emergency cover included, surveyors reports, tracing leaks, legal fees too among other things.

Very expensive though - I pay around £480 a year for combined Buildings and Contents.

With insurance companies, you get what you pay for tbh.

That’s cheaper than last year and almost half of this year’s quote.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

I've just received a quote from our normal insurers which has bizarrely doubled in price from last year. It did go up last year, which I expected as we had a small claim two years previously, but we have gone four years now since a claim.
I have tried to fill in online forms but when it came to the value of the house, I used a figure which a neighbour's house sold for in January of this year, which it refuses to accept.
I know that rebuilding costs are generally exaggerated in insurance quotes so I am not going to use an inflated price.
It's the only claim we have made in the 21 years we have lived here.
House owner, no mortgage, 3 bed end terrace, two adults.

Has anyone got any recommendations for good insurers, please?

I had a similar experience recently.

I have always had my insurance with a company that Provide insurance which is underwritten by a company I work for.
They are moving out of the Personal insurance market and are in the process of selling off their book to various other underwriters.

The insurance product I have is still under contract with the underwriters, and my assumption is that they are no longer interested in retaining the business at renewal, and so they have just allowed the premium to increase, as they have no desire to incentivise retention.

You may be in a similar position.

I switched and got the premium down to a sensible level.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

Try Policy Expert, ours is up for renewal a larger house than yours but £266. Up from £196 last year. I tried the comparison sites and it still comes out as a reasonable quote. We had a claim 3 years ago.

Yeah that's who I switched to. similar cost

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I had a similar experience recently.

I have always had my insurance with a company that Provide insurance which is underwritten by a company I work for.
They are moving out of the Personal insurance market and are in the process of selling off their book to various other underwriters.

The insurance product I have is still under contract with the underwriters, and my assumption is that they are no longer interested in retaining the business at renewal, and so they have just allowed the premium to increase, as they have no desire to incentivise retention.

You may be in a similar position.

I switched and got the premium down to a sensible level.

Thank you, that is helpful. My insurance is underwritten by Aviva, so you could be on the button there.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

Thank you, that is helpful. My insurance is underwritten by Aviva, so you could be on the button there.

That's interesting as I was going to suggest looking at Aviva in addition to the GoCompares etc as Aviva don't appear on comparison websites. We had our home insurance with them for a number of years. Each year we beat them down a little on their renewal, but I eventually moved in September 2022.

I will only go with names I'm aware of - so don't go for the cheapest. 3rd or 4th on the search I did was Halifax. That got me interested as a couple of years or so before, some very close friends of ours had a fire in their kitchen - caused by a coffee machine that overheated/caught fire ... directly under the gas boiler. My mate was out walking his dog - came back to find fire engines outside his house. Fire damage was confined to the kitchen - but there was extensive smoke damage throughout the house - a decent detached house in Steyning. They had to move out into rented for 6/7 months and the Halifax were superb. The rented house they were staying in was 2 doors from where Shane Duffy was living at the time he was having 'matrimonial problems'.

So ... we went with the Halifax in September 2022. Two months later - in the November - we had a big storm. We lost some tiles on the apex of our house. To be honest, the apex really needed doing (we'd done one half previously) ... so wear and tear definitely was part of the problem. I called the Halifax - the chap did mention we'd barely been with them for two months - but they could see we'd had wins in excess of 60mph and so approved the claim there and then. We just had to get quotes. They paid out £2,480 + VAT and we had to pay our £300 excess.

We've renewed the two subsequent years with them. September's renewal was £373.24 - up from £340.34. I didn't bother shopping around at that price as it's so much hassle. And we can pay monthly without any charge. We have the Silver cover which is full rebuild cost (didn't have to give a figure), £100,000 contents, valuables up to £2,000 per item, £3,000 of items away from home and also Legal Expenses cover.

We are on Shoreham Beach between the sea and River Adur.

Might be worth checking them out.

Halifax Home Insurance

 

[BrightonCottager]

I've just lost 30 minutes of my life trying to cancel an auto-renewal for a home insurance policy with Admiral. Their renewal quote was almost double what I paid last year and I got a better quote for a hundred quid less. I couldn't just cancel the Admiral online - had to 'talk' to a chat bot and insist 4 times that I just wanted to cancel. It had the cheek to offer me a £60 'discount' on the renewal price halfway through.

 

[Weststander]

I use Ecclesiastical

Absolutely brilliant. Never turned down a claim, very generous payouts with emergency cover included, surveyors reports, tracing leaks, legal fees too among other things.

Very expensive though - I pay around £480 a year for combined Buildings and Contents.

With insurance companies, you get what you pay for tbh.

Direct Line, NFU Mutual and LV also have good reputations when needed.

 

[pearl]

I've just received a quote from our normal insurers which has bizarrely doubled in price from last year. It did go up last year, which I expected as we had a small claim two years previously, but we have gone four years now since a claim.
I have tried to fill in online forms but when it came to the value of the house, I used a figure which a neighbour's house sold for in January of this year, which it refuses to accept.
I know that rebuilding costs are generally exaggerated in insurance quotes so I am not going to use an inflated price.
It's the only claim we have made in the 21 years we have lived here.
House owner, no mortgage, 3 bed end terrace, two adults.

Has anyone got any recommendations for good insurers, please?

Just a thought .... have you checked the quote? Maybe it's wrong