Home insurance FAQs

What is home insurance?

Home insurance can be split into two cover types – buildings insurance, and contents insurance.

As the name suggests, Buildings insurance covers any damage to the structure of you building itself, such as roof, walls and floors. It also generally covers fixtures and fittings, such as a bathroom suite, and fitted kitchens.

Likewise, Contents insurance covers damage to, or loss of, any personal possessions in the property, such as home entertainment, furniture, and white goods.
These can be bought separately, although most insurance providers also bundle both together. Buying a combined policy from the same insurer can often be cheaper than buying the two separately.

Is it essential to have home insurance?

If you own a house with a mortgage, most mortgage providers will insist you have buildings cover in place to cover at least the rebuild value of the house – after all, until the mortgage is paid off, they own a stake in the house, and if it were to fall down, they would be left out of pocket too.

If you don’t have a mortgage, home insurance is often not mandatory, but is still very advisable. Very few houses would have a rebuild value of less than £100,000 – money that an uninsured property owner would have to find themselves if they didn’t have adequate buildings insurance in place.

Contents insurance is not mandatory, but again, we often have far greater value of possessions than we realize (remember it’s not just items like your TV and stereo, it’s all you furniture, clothes, bedding, children’s toys – it all adds up). If any of these things were to be damaged or be stolen, the cost of replacement would fall on you, and you alone.

Why would I need to take out a joint home insurance policy?

By adding a joint policyholder to your home insurance, it enables the other person to make a claim, so it’s not only you who is able to deal with any communications with the insurer. It can also under some circumstances lower your premium.

What is accidental damage cover and do I need it?

In layman’s terms, most insurance providers define accidental damage as an unintentional one-off incident that harms your property or its contents. Most standard policies cover key items such as home entertainment, but there may be exclusions that vary from provider to provider, and these may not extend to things such as furniture of clothes.
Whether you need them depends on your circumstances – many accidental damage claims come from those with young children, or those who have often have young children visiting their house.

It is also important to know what is covered under your standard policy. Checking the small print can be a bit of a pain, but is the best way to make sure that you aren’t paying twice to cover the same risks, or even worse, are not covered at all.

Do I have to get my buildings insurance through my mortgage provider?

Unless it is a specific requirement of your mortgage contract, then definitely not. In fact, you will often save money by shopping around.

By being the only insurance provider offering you buildings cover at the point where you are arranging your mortgage, there is less need for them to price your insurance policy competitively – meaning you could end up paying more than you would in a more open marketplace. Using a price comparison site to get a range of quotes from a number of providers is often the best way to ensure you pay less, and have extra money to spend on your new home.

What should I include in my contents cover?

If we talk about our home contents, nearly everyone would think first about the electronic goods, and maybe any antiques or jewellery they have – and often overlook the more everyday items  such as furniture, bedding, clothes, children’s toys. This means that when valuing the contents of our homes, we often underestimate – a mistake for two reasons.

Firstly, clearly if you underestimate the value, if you were to make a claim for everything in your house (in case of a fire for example), you wouldn’t be covered for everything.
Secondly, there is a phenomenon in insurance called “Condition of Average”. In short, this means that if you take out a policy covering £25,000 worth of contents and you’re a victim of theft and the claim is for £5,000. If the loss adjustor estimates that your combined contents is actually worth twice what you’re policy covers, the payout will only cover half the claim, so you’d only get £2,500 back.

Therefore, it is definitely worth taking the time to go around your house from room to room, and putting a reasonable value on everything.

Should I increase my excess to make my policy cheaper?

Voluntary excess is the amount you agree to pay before the insurer steps in and pays off the balance of a claim. So if you made a claim for £500, with a voluntary excess of £200, you would be expected to pay the voluntary excess yourself, with the insurer paying the remaining £300. Of course, the more money you agree to pay towards each claim, the less cost there would be for an insurance provider, and so they may reduce the premium accordingly.

However, the golden rule of any voluntary excess – make sure you know exactly what you could actually afford to pay yourself in the event of a claim. While setting an unaffordable high voluntary excess may save yourself a few pounds on your premium in the short term, if ever you needed to make a claim, you could find yourself with a large bill to meet yourself before your insurance company will pay out on a claim.

If I don't let my insurer know about changes could this affect my cover?

Potentially, yes.

For example, if you have told your buildings insurance provider that your roof is in good repair, they have based your premium on the known risk of storm damage happening to the average roof. However, if in fact your guttering is already falling off or your tiles are coming loose, then there is a greater than average risk of damage happening during a storm – something that the insurance provider hasn’t been able to cover against based on your original premium.

The fact that the full risks weren’t disclosed, you are effectively insuring higher risks at a cheaper (i.e. ”unfair” to the insurance provider) price. This could invalidate your policy, and leave you without a payout in the event of a claim.

Can I cover myself against damage by pets?

Unfortunately, most home insurance policies don’t damage caused by pets as standard. To cover this, you will often need to buy standalone pet insurance.

Does home insurance apply to me if I rent?

As the owner of the building, your landlord will be the one who is responsible for the maintenance of the building itself, so it is down to them to make sure that their property is protected through buildings insurance.

However, any contents inside that you own are your responsibility, and if anything were to happen to them (damage, or theft), then you would liable yourself for the cost of replacing them.
In most cases, we own hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of possessions without even realizing it, so replacement wouldn’t always be possible if we had to pay directly for it. For this reason, finding a good value contents insurance policy is often a very sound investment if the worst were to happen.

What if my situation changes, such as building an extension or buying expensive furniture?

You need to inform you insurer of any changes to your buildings and/or you contents, which may impact the cover you have.

The key point to remember is that your contract with your insurance provider is based on mutual disclosure of information – they charge you a “fair” premium, based on the risks you have made them aware of.  If the risks were to change, then so too does the value of a “fair” premium.

If in doubt, ask your insurance provider. The time taken for a quick phone call could save any problems arising in the event of a claim.

What if I need a quote for an unnoccupied property?

If the property you’re quoting for is empty, then on the first page of the quotation process (‘About You’) you would need to enter your main home address. On the second page (‘The Property’) you would then need to confirm and select that the property you’re insuring is not your home address. You can then select that the property is left unattended for more than 60 days at a time. Please be aware that an unoccupied home often falls outside of the underwriting criteria of our home insurance panel, so you’re likely to receive fewer quotes than usual.

How do I get a quote for a property I let?

You can quote for a property you own but rent out to tenants on our landlord's insurance page. Landlord’s insurance isn’t quite the same as a standard home insurance quote, so we’ve got a separate option for it.

How do I get a quote for a property I rent?

As a tenant, you can obtain contents insurance for the property, but you won’t be able to purchase buildings insurance; this is the responsibility of your landlord. When you start your home insurance quote, you’ll have the option to select whether you want a quote for buildings, contents, or a combined buildings and contents insurance policy. Here you can select that you’re quoting only for contents insurance.