Home insurance valuation query

RainInSummer

Hi all,

Just wondering about valuing the family home for insurance purposes.
We bought about 5 years ago and insured at the price we paid plus a percentage for all the new stuff we moved in with.

I might have been a bit naive in determining the value as I've read recently that only A rated homes are allowed be built these days. And the cost to build an A rated home would be way more than say a B3 which we currently are.

So if the worst were to happen and the house end up as smouldering pancake what should I be aiming at in terms of rebuild costs?

Bog standard rural bungalow with converted attic is what we're taking about.
Can provide more detail if needed.

wench

It sounds like you probably have plenty of insurance.
The rebuild cost is normally less than what you paid, as a portion of your purchase price was for the land, which you would still have.

passremarkable

Look up scsi.ie for a rebuild guide
That should help

Eggs For Dinner

Your insurance will rebuild you to the previous standard. If you are obliged to rebuild to a higher specification, you will have to make up the difference yourself. Increasing the sum insured to reflect the higher specification does not get around this. You are not entitled to have a better house than you had before the loss

RainInSummer

wench wrote: »

It sounds like you probably have plenty of insurance.
The rebuild cost is normally less than what you paid, as a portion of your purchase price was for the land, which you would still have.

Cheers for that. Good point.

JustAThought

Eggs For Dinner wrote: »

Your insurance will rebuild you to the previous standard. If you are obliged to rebuild to a higher specification, you will have to make up the difference yourself. Increasing the sum insured to reflect the higher specification does not get around this. You are not entitled to have a better house than you had before the loss

I don’t know?
One of my old policies had a new for old benefit in it - if your furniture was fire or water damaged fir example they would pay for new furniture irrespective of the age or condition of the old ones. Might it be the same for houses bricks & mortar? I din’t know but if the building regulations have changed you’d hardly be allowed build it to the same specification - eg wiring : asbestos roof etc. Why not the same for the overall standard of the house?

Home insurance is as distorted by the industry as insurance claims payouts for fake injuries were. And there is no transparency or help offered by the insurance companies - our brethern in Dáil Eireann who allegedly regulate them should be on top of them but they refuse to do right by the hundreds of thousands of people why pay for it every year with zero idea of if they are being ripped off or paying wasted money into tens of thousands year after year on premiums that will never be paid out for some tiny unknown clause or reason.

They are laughing like hyeanas at us and the regulators are sitting on their hands in heated offices drawing huge salaries and pensions and doing nothing for Joe Bloggs.

I was asking an agent to give a estimate on a square footage bricks & mortar house recently and they point blank refused - no, they’re no database, no historical data, no idea - shoild I take the cost of the land in an expensive part of Dublin from the insured value - no comment : not a word of advise except to charter a surveyor every year to find out. If I overinsure they charge the premium up based on this if I underinsure they will refuse to honour it - any of it - if my battery for a carbon monoxide alarm is out of date and my house has an unrelated claim like a flood they will refuse to honour it, etc etc etc

The regulators should be called out and fired for being utterly useless. Its like the gaurds regulating themselves - a total joke.

Eggs For Dinner

OK!