HIGH VALUE HOME INSURANCE

Whether you own a terraced house or a mansion, it is a legal requirement to have home insurance secured on your property. Home insurance will cover not only the foundations of your property but also your personal possessions.

What Does Home Insurance Cover?

Home insurance is essentially made up of two separate products, both of which are a critical part of owning a home of any size; buildings cover and contents cover:

• Buildings Cover essentially covers the bricks and mortar side of your property, and helps provide you with a level of protection should your property sustain damage as a result of adverse weather conditions including storms and flooding.
• Contents Cover helps to provide cover on everything from the furniture you lounge on to the carpets under your feet. Contents cover also helps to cover luxury items such as jewellery and electronic items.

But what happens if you have a larger property of more than 7 bedrooms, or a larger value of valuables such as antiques? Regular home insurance policies won’t be able to cover such expensive items due to the increased risk of theft or damage; in this case your property will need some high value home insurance.

What Is Classified As A High Value Home?

Larger and more expensive properties will be more at risk of being burgled because of the value of the contents they contain – from fine art to Ferraris – and the buildings themselves may also be listed or be specially built from the ground up, both of which can affect the price of your premium.

When it comes to finding a home insurance policy for a higher-value home, different brokers will have different criteria for what they regard as a house of high value, this can include:

• The value of the property – usually those which would cost more than £500,000 to rebuild
• The age and nature of the property – those who live in older properties, have a property which has unusual features and those who have built their properties from scratch will usually be classified as having higher value homes.
• Listed buildings – If your home has a Grade 1 or 2 classification it will require special higher value home insurance due to the age of the building (usually those between 1700 and 1840) and are of special historical or national importance.
• The value of the contents – if you have a large collection of high-value or rare items, including fine art, antiques and jewellery, you are going to have to pay a higher premium in order to insure them against damage or loss due to theft.

Can I Insure Antiques On My Policy?

Standard content insurance policies will usually value items by their recommended retail price, but for higher value or antique items it can be difficult to equate the value of said items.

Because of potential fluctuations in value it can be worth insuring these items against a specialist high value home insurance policy in order to make sure you get back as much of the predicted value of your items back should they be damaged or stolen – even if the items are priceless to you.

What About Outside My Property?

High value home insurance policies can be tailored to add extras in order to cover the external aspects of your property – including gardens and garages – and these can vary from broker to broker, so if you’ve a large collection of rare shrubbery in your grounds it could be worth mentioning to your broker.

What About My Staff?

If you have domestic staff who work on your premises, then it can be worth seeing if your policy includes some form of Employers’ Liability, this would help to cover the legal fees involved should a staff member bring a claim against you as a result of an accident or injury whilst under your employment.

If you’re looking to save money on your high value home insurance, pop in a few details here at Quotiva and let us do the searching for you. Using a network of UK-based brokers we can find the best deal for you.