What is Building Insurance?
Buildings insurance covers the structure of your home as well as any fixtures and fittings including fitted kitchens and bathroom suites. If you own your own home, you’ll need to have buildings cover just in case your home is damaged and needs a repair. It’s not compulsory, but it’s usually a condition of your mortgage. If you own your own home, with or without a mortgage, it’s important that this insurance is a top priority.
You are able to add on things on to your policy which don’t come as standard and we are happy to talk through these in detail if you were interested in knowing more. However, the usual optional extras which are taken include:
Accidental Damage
Adding this to your policy will cover you for putting a hole through a pipe when drilling a hole or breaking a window with a football.
Home Emergency
Adding this to your policy will provide on average up to £1,500 per incident, with no limit on the number of incidents per year, for a number of household emergencies. Cover is provided for the cost of a contractor’s emergency call-out, labour charges and parts and materials.
Family Legal Cover
Adding this to your policy offers on average up to £150,000 of legal cover per year and is designed to help customers through difficult and often stressful legal situations. This can include employment disputes, personal injury claims and being the victim of identity fraud- but it covers so much more.
Building Warranty
When you purchase a new build property, it usually comes with a 10 or 12 year Build Warranty. This can sometimes be confused with Building Insurance, but the truth of the matter is that you will more than likely need to have both in this situation.
A building warranty is cover for the cost of rectifying or repairing structural damage to a building, caused by a fault in the design, faulty construction or imperfect materials- it is not there to cover anything which is not classified as a fault of the build. If you don’t have both, you may find that you’re leaving yourself open to having to pay for damages yourself if they aren’t specifically covered by your warranty provider.
