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HOME INSURANCE FAQ
What is Home Insurance?
Home Insurance is insurance cover for your home and its contents.Home insurance covers damage from incidents such as natural disasters, fire, theft, and vandalism to your home and normally covers similar problems for secondary buildings like your garage or shed. Home Insurance is also for the contents of your home, ie funds should be made available so you can replace any personal belongings affected by crime, accidents or disaster. Home Insurance should cover your living expenses if your house becomes temporarily unusable, for example due to flooding.
What Are Contents and Buildings Insurance?
Contents insurance and buildings insurance are the two main types of Home Insurance. Contents insurance covers your possessions during a burglary or accidental damage is caused. Buildings insurance covers the actual physical property – bricks, doors, roof, windows, drives, patios and the general structure against disasters and accidental damage. Satellite dishes and aerials are an extension of your TV and so are normally covered via your contents insurance.
Do I Need Home Insurance?
Building Societies and other mortgage lenders usually insist you take out buildings insurance or they wont lend you money. Its also advisable and offers security and peace of mind, your home normally being the major financial investment anyone makes in their life.
How much should I insure my buildings for?
You must be careful with this – make sure that you do not insure your buildings for the market value of your property. You are insuring against the fact that the building has to be demolished, the site cleared and then your property rebuilt. You wont have to buy the land again, so as a result the rebuild cost is typically much lower than the market value. If you insure for the market value you are wasting your money and over insuring yourself!
What counts as my household contents?
Basically your house contents are anything that you would reasonably take with you if you moved – your bathroom suite wouldn’t be considered to be your household contents for example. Another way of thinking about it is to imagine picking up your house and shaking it – everything that would fall out is considered to be your contents.
I live in rented accommodation, can I insure the buildings?
In order to buy insurance you must have an ‘insurable interest’, basically you have to own whatever it is you are trying to insure. In this case if you rent your accommodation you will not, in most circumstances, own the building. As a result you cannot insure it, you can only insure your own personal belongings within the building.