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By Louise Devlin
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Buying a new home can be a wonderful experience but is also full of challenging steps that can delay and complicate the purchase of your home.
One that needlessly causes home buyers anxiety is getting the correct home insurance in place. Arachas have a fantastic team of home insurance experts that can take the hassle out of purchasing your home insurance and ensure you have the right cover in place.
1. Type of Insurance You Need
- Moving in Immediately or Need Renovation?
As soon as you have signed contracts and taken ownership of your property, you need to have insurance in place to protect your asset. One of the first points to consider is the type of insurance you need. Are you buying a home that will be ready to move into immediately or will your home require renovations? If you are planning to renovate your home, you may need a different type of insurance in place to cater for this.
- Policy for Period of Renovation
If the home is going to be unoccupied during this period of renovation, you will need a policy that caters for both works taking place and the fact the property will be unoccupied. Arachas work with different insurance companies that can provide this specialist level of cover for you and offer policies that range from 3 months to annual policies. Once the work is complete and you can occupy the home, our home insurance experts will then sort you out with a standard home insurance quote. Alternatively, you can also call us on 01 582 7108 to speak to one of our agents.
- What's the Rebuild Cost of Your Home?
Before you can get a home insurance quote, you need to be able to provide accurate information on the cost to rebuild your home, this is not the purchase price of your home or the perceived value of the home. This is the amount required needed to rebuild your home in the event of a total loss. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) provide a very useful calculator that will assist you in calculating the rebuild cost of your property.
2. Value of the Contents in Your House
The next figure you will need is the value of the contents that you will have in your new home. This can be a difficult figure to gauge when purchasing a new home, each home is different and two very similar sized properties can have a large difference in the value of their contents. When you are calculating contents home insurance you need to take account of the cost of replacing the following:
- Furniture
- Electrical goods
- Clothes
- Computers & Gaming Equipment
- Toys
- Furnishings
- Jewelry
- Handbags
- Sports Equipment
- Tools and any similar items
If you have collections of stamps, coins, comics or anything similar these should also be included. Fixed fittings like fitted wardrobes, kitchens sink etc. are included in your buildings sum insured figure.
Also, before you purchase your new home it’s important to see if you can obtain insurance on the new property. When you have the above buildings and contents sums insured figures you should then approach insurance providers to get a home quote. Once you provide the Eircode the home insurance agent will be able to check and see if companies are offering flood cover in your area. If there are some companies not offering flood cover this should be a red flag that you need to do further investigation before purchasing your home.
3. Is the Construction of Your New Home Going to be Standard?
There are many different materials that can be used in construction of a modern house and not all insurers will quote in all instances. Find out from your estate agent or surveyor the materials used in construction of the home and how much if any of your roof is flat. Arachas's home insurance work with a number of providers that will be able to cater for all of your needs.
4. Check your Policy Excess
Just like on your car insurance, your home insurance will have a policy excess – an excess is the first portion of any claim that you will be liable for – the difference with your car insurance is that for home insurance there will be multiple types of excess.
- The first is the standard excess that will apply to most aspects of the policy. This typically ranges from €200 to €350
- You then also have an escape of water excess which typically ranges from €500-€1,000 but can be increased significantly depending on the age and construction of the property
- The other common excess is for subsidence and land heave, this typically ranges from €750-€1500. If your property is in an area prone to subsidence or land heave an insurer will not typically offer any level of cover for this type of claim.
Worried about the claim process? Let us help you step-by-step to understand how you can file for your home insurance claim.
Finally, once you have a quote ready, if you find an insurance quote that is significantly cheaper than alternatives, you need to carefully check the excess to make sure they are not substantially higher than the rest of the market. In these cases, you should also check the requirements of the home insurance policy and ensure that full cover is available. There are companies on the market that offer a stripped-down policy that does not cover any escape of water claims. If you purchase one of these policies and you have a burst or leaking pipe, no damage caused would be covered.
5. Letter of Indemnity
Before you can draw down mortgage for your mortgage repayments and complete the purchase of your home, your mortgage provider will require a letter of indemnity from your home insurer. This letter notes the banks interest on your home.
Some providers can be very slow in providing you with this letter which may delay the drawdown date of your property. When you speak to an Arachas home insurance agent they will always ask you for the closure date of your purchase, so they can ensure that they have the indemnity letter in plenty of time for you. With some providers, Arachas will be able to issue the letter of indemnity immediately after you purchase your home insurance.