Home insurance

How high you set your home insurance excess depends on how much you can afford. With compulsory excess, your insurance provider sets the amount and you can’t change it.
With voluntary excess, you can change the amount. By raising your voluntary excess, your premiums are likely to be cheaper. But don’t set it too high – you want to make sure you can afford to pay both the compulsory and voluntary excess, should you need to make a claim.

Having a poor credit score may affect the cost of home insurance. But you’re still likely to be able to find an insurance provider with a policy and price that suits you.

For your valuables to be protected outside your home, you’ll need personal possessions cover. Some insurance providers include it as a standard feature with contents insurance, but others don’t.

If you do have personal possessions cover, restrictions could apply to what items you’ll be covered for outside the home. You’ll also need to add any valuable items worth more than £1,500 to your quote individually, to make sure they’re covered while you’re out and about.

You may decide you need home insurance add-ons if you think your standard policy doesn’t give you enough cover in specific areas. For example, adding accidental damage to your policy would typically cover things like ink stains on furniture or orange juice stains on the carpet.

When working out how much buildings insurance to get, remember that you only need to insure the cost of rebuilding your home and not its market value. You can find the rebuild cost of your property in your home survey or by using the rebuilding calculator on the Building Cost Information Service website.

The best way to calculate the value of your home’s contents is to make an inventory of all your possessions. When you get a quote with us, you can use our handy calculator to help you add up the value of the contents in your home, room by room.

Find out more about how to estimate the value of your home contents.

If you’re building an extension or carrying out any sort of construction work on your property, you should let your home insurance provider know. While knocking down walls, plumbing work and taking up floors will usually be carried out safely, they all have the potential to cause damage that could lead to an insurance claim.

It’s likely you’ll have to pay more for your premium, both during the construction work itself and afterwards, as an extension will add to the rebuild cost.

If you’re carrying out large-scale renovations to your home, you might need specialist insurance to cover you during the work.

Most buildings insurance policies will cover you for burst pipes and water leaks as standard. This is usually classed as an ‘escape of water’, whether it’s caused by burst pipes, blocked drains or a leaky washing machine.

If you do make a claim for an escape of water, however, you might find you have to pay a higher compulsory excess. That’s the fixed amount you’ll have to contribute towards the claim. Check your policy documents for specific details.