Breaking Down Home Insurance

Breaking Down Home Insurance

If you’re new to the property market, you may already have your head spinning over the ins and outs involved in buying a house. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to become familiar with the world of home insurance – something that can cause trepidation in first time buyers, but which is really quite simple once you break it down.

Put simply, ‘home insurance’ is actually a combination of contents insurance and buildings insurance. You can either choose to buy both aspects from the same company, or get them separately.
The easiest way to understand the difference between contents and buildings cover is to imagine your home as a doll house. Basically, if you picked up the doll house and shook it, everything that fell out would be covered by your contents cover, and everything else by your buildings cover. Contents insurance is really for the possessions and belongings within your home – TVs, furniture, valuables etc – whilst buildings insurance is for the immovable fixtures and the buildings in the property.

Another key thing to remember when you’re purchasing home insurance is that your home is not just your house. Be careful to consider all the elements of your property, from the house itself to the garden, any outbuildings like sheds and garages, as well as gates, paths and walls. When you’re doing your research, make sure that any policies you’re considering have adequate cover for all of these elements, as there’s no way to predict what you might have to claim for.

Though it can all seem like a bit of a headache, once you do a bit of research on your own you’ll see that it’s not that complicated. Feel free to take advantage of price comparison tools like MoneySupermarket, but don’t base your decision solely on this as they often have a narrower view than you could get with a bit of investigation.

Go to individual companies, as well as asking for advice from friends and relatives that have already been through the whole process. Most companies like Kwik Fit Insurance, offer a discount if you want to take out a combined policy with them, but do the adequate research and check that these shared, or dual policies, do look after your insurance needs. It may be that a single policy is sufficient.  For an idea of the coverage out there, look at the Kwik Fit Insurance website to see what gets covered by their contents insurance policy. 

In the end, it’s only a brief period of stress which will eventually give you peace of mind in your new home – what more could you want?