Home insurance in the UK falls into two categories: buildings insurance and contents insurance. The first quote covers you in the event of any damage to the actual structure of fixtures and fittings of your property, whilst contents insurance, as you would expect from its name, insures the contents of your home against loss or damage. Both of these should include protection against fire and theft, as well as subsidence, flood and storm damage.

To know what your buildings insurance will cover, try this simple test - can you reasonably remove the fixture and take it to a new home? If you can it will be covered by contents insurance - as if you can remove it, so can a thief! If you can't, it will be covered by your buildings insurance.

Buildings Insurance

When you buy a home, you are taking a quite enormous risk, unless you are very rich already. You effectively borrow 4 or 5 times your yearly income to buy a home. You have to pay this back. If you do not pay it back, then the lender has the right to reclaim your home. But what happens if your home burns down? Or what happens if it slips into the ground due to subsidence? What happens if you can't live in your house anymore?

Also, bear in mind that you need buildings insurance from the first time you are responsible for the property, which could be from the moment that you exchange contracts on a purchase. make sure that proper insurance is in place at this time. You should always ensure that there is proper insurance in place from the point that you first become responsible for the premises, even if this is before moving.

It's important to note that you are not covered for the market value of your home. Insurance is there to put you back into the position before the event happened. So cover ought to be for the amount that it takes to rebuild your home. Do not confuse this with the market value of your home, which is different.

Buildings insurance is compulsory with a mortgage although it doesn't mean though that you have to buy buildings insurance from your lender. They can't force you to do it either. It may be possible that some mortgage discounts will be linked to taking their recommended home insurance. Whether you take this is up to you.

So what determines your building insurance premiums? Well, it's the rebuilding cost of your home, and where the home is. Should it be on a flood plain or in an area where subsistence is rife then you could have trouble getting insurance at all, but it'll be definitely more expensive.

The cover offered by the policy will need to keep up with inflation, so you will find that most insurance companies will index-link their cover, so that it will grow every year. You should still review your policy every few years, as the cover may not be adequate for your needs, especially given the rising house and land prices.

Most homeowners take out household insurance to cover themselves financially in the event of damage, theft or loss of a property and its contents. In addition to this it should also insure you, as the proprietor, against liability for damage to another property or injury to another person.

Home contents insurance in the UK is designed to cover almost everything that you own, and would take with you if you were to move. So, this could include furniture, along with furnishings, kitchen equipments, video, clothing, personal items, even frozen food and drinks. Finally, they can insure valuables up to stated limits.

Most contents insurance policies will cover loss or damage to your possessions whilst they are in your home. The loss and damage could be caused by risks such as theft, fire and flooding. Other risks could be the escape of water from tanks and pipes, leaking oil from heating systems, storms, subsidence, heave or landslip as well as occurrences that are more rare.

Not only that, many policies provide liability insurance. So, should someone visit your home and trip over something and injure themselves, they could make a claim against you. These claims can be for a considerable amount.

You should also look at accidental damage caused by yourself. Does it cover accidental damage to mirrors and glass tops? Does it cover accidental damage to your audio and visual equipment, such as videos, TVs and computers? One of the natures of insurance is that you can often extend a policy in order to cover accidental damage to any item you have. Bear in mind though, that this will likely only apply in the home, and should you remove items from your home, your cover could be limited or even non-existent.

Interested in Buildings & Contents Insurance?