Home Insurance beginner

My father used to organise this but he passed away some months ago. My elderly mother seems to be paying Aviva around €74 a month for home & contents insurance. I'd like to help her get a better deal but I have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing.

I guess the first thing to do would be to go around the house and estimate the value of all the contents. Would I be able to find a good deal myself or should we just make our lives a lot easier by going to an insurance broker?

Would be grateful for any help!

coylemj

The first thing you need to figure out is the rebuilding cost if the house is totally destroyed in a fire, the shell needs to be demolished and the house rebuilt. In many cases, this will bear little relationship to the market value of your house because the (sale) value of your house is affected big time by the location whereas rebuilding the house will cost the same whether you live in the posh or the less fashionable part of town.

You will need an estimate of the floor area of the house to calculate a rough rebuild cost and the society of chartered surveyors have some advice on their website ..... https://www.scsi.ie/documents/view?id=56

On contents, you will be forced to take contents cover with most household policies of the order of €25,000 or so which is probably more than enough for most people - I wouldn't bother going around the house putting notional values on beds and chests of drawers.

You can get quotes online from FBD, Aviva, Axa etc. and I'd say your mother should paying a lot less than €74 p.m.

Wow that's fantastic advice thank you!! It's rather embarrassing now that I looked at the policy. My mum lives in a cosy two bedroom semi detached. Yet my father had the contents value down as €52k!!!! My initial reaction was that it was madness and you've confirmed it for me.

Thankfully the policy is up for renewal in September so I can get things sorted....or go elsewhere.

Shooter_galway

Op valie ur items as this figure may be lower than the value of the contents.. insurance is there to rebuild and refurnish a house in worst case scenario I have seen this first hand people underinsured to save a few quid and houses being gutted and not enough to do them up.