Tips when setting up Home Insurance and how to keep cost of your home insurance policy down.
What are 3 ways to reduce your premium for homeowners insurance?
Improve home security to keep home insurance price down.
Items such as deadbolt locks, bars on windows and smoke detectors often bring discounts of 5% each, depending on the company.
Your insurance company may also offer a significant discount of 15% or 20% if you install a sophisticated home-security alarm system. If you’re thinking about buying such a system, check with your insurer to see which systems they recommend and which will earn you a discount. A connected alarm to a security center is always the way to go.
Buy your home and car insurance policies from the same insurance company
Many companies will give a discount if you buy both homeowners and car insurance from them.
The insurer will consider you a high quality client if you have more than one policy with them. This helps in the event of a claim.
If for example, you have a car accident and there was a large amount paid out by the insurer they will be more likely to offer better renewal terms if you also have your home cover with them.
Consider the consequence to the insurance price when buying a home
If you’re looking at buying a home, think about the cost of insuring the home. A newer home’s electrical, heating and plumbing systems and overall structure are likely to be in better condition than those of an older home. This can lead to a discount on your premiums.
Tips when deciding your homes rebuild value and what square meters to declare
Insure your the square meters of your home, not the land
Although your home and its contents are at risk from fire, theft, wind and other perils, the land your house sits on is not. Don’t include the value of the land in deciding how much homeowners insurance you need to buy.
Many people ask for a quote for the property including the square meters of the property and the land the home sits on. This will lead to over insurance which is not an entirely bad thing.
It is much better than under insuring the property. That being said, the insurer will only compensate you for the sq meters of the property and will not pay out the over insurance amount.
Insure the rebuild value and not the purchase or resale value
The location and view of the property will greatly affect your homes value, but will not affect any construction costs related to your home.
For example a home that has a purchase or re sale value of 300,000 euros, will not cost that much to rebuild. Usually a property of this value will have a rebuild value of 200,000 euros or slightly more if the qualities used in construction are of high value, such as good quality marble floors.
Ask an Insurance Broker to analyse your policy
An insurance broker can check the whole market and check if your policy is insured correctly and with the best company for the type of property. This will be probably the best way to keep the home insurance price down. At Bsure we can provide three quotes so you can get a good idea of the market price.
What to check on your existing Home Insurance policy and what home insurance discounts to ask for
Check your values insured
You want your policy to reflect the value of your home and belongings. If you review your policy every year, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments. If, for example, you just sold a valuable painting, you won’t need the same amount of coverage. But if you added a garage, you’ll need to increase your coverage.
Check the market
A lot of the time people have their home insurance policy in place for many years without checking the market. If you have not checked your policy in a few years it may be possible to apply a commercial discount to get the renewal price down. Therefore it is always a good idea to ask your broker for a general update on the values insured and if all discounts are applied to the policy.
When can discounts be applied
Applying any discount will always be on condition that the policy has been claims free and there has been no gaps in coverage. As the saying goes every little helps. By keeping your insurance policies price down, you will have those funds saved to go to other costs such as electric bills and maybe even a nice holiday.
Is house insurance cheaper without a mortgage
This question is quite common. The real question however is do banks charge a lot more for home insurance than normal ways of buying home insurance.
The simple answer is yes, the bank will charge more.
If you have a mortage no doubt the bank tied you into a home insurance policy for at least the first year. By European Law you are entitled to switch insurer after one year and the bank can not force you to maintain it with them.
How the banks are getting round this recently is they are reducing the interest rate on the mortgage if you keep the insurance with them for a certain amount of years.
We have heard time frames of 5 years and 10 years where the mortgage insterest rate will be linked to the home policy.
In some instance we have seen banks request that the customer buys the insurance for 15 years with an upfront payment! Not a great idea if you have a claim and do not get paid out or are not happy with the insurer they have provided.
Should I take my home insurance out with the bank
If you have a mortgage then in most cases you will have to go with the bank for first year. We would advise not to get tied in for many years. There are two main reasons; number one, the premium to start off with is usually 50% more than through an insurance specialist.
The second reason is that the bank will not help you when you have a claim, you will have to search the internet for the claims number with no really support. It is always best to go to a agent or insurance broker since they will provide support when you need it most.