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Home Insurance
Home insurance will protect your contents of your home against damage by storm, flood or disaster as well against theft or accidental damage. Home insurance is not a legal requirement like buildings insurance but is certainly a worthwhile investment to protect your valuable possessions.
Home insurance comes with 2 principal elements - Buildings insurance and Contents insurance, which can be purchased separately or as a combined policy.
Before obtaining quotes for your home insurance, it's worth making a list of the items in each room and calculating the cost to replace them, as you will be surprised at the higher cost required. This will enable you to make sure you're not under insured and that the home insurance policy cover is more than sufficient.
When checking with home insurance policies' benefits you should check the single items limits for valuables, such as your TV or Hi Fi System and jewellery, as you may need to identify them to the insurer to ensure they are fully covered. You should also consider adding personal possessions cover with 'all risks', which means cover for your possessions, up to a limit, which are not kept at home or whilst on holiday with you, to include items such as mobile phones, ipods, pda's, jewellery, etc.
Accidental damage cover on your home insurance cover will protect you against accidents, such as oil spills or paint spills on carpets, broken ornaments or even children writing on the walls. If you look around your home you will be surprised as to the replacement value of items of furniture, curtains, carpets, woodblock flooring, dvd's, pc's and the desk and chair that you're using to read this.
Sadly theft is a problem and to replace items such as dvd collections, cameras, electrical equipment would cost thousands. Home insurance is the only way to protect your possessions, other than a guard dog and burglar alarm, which would hopefully scare off would be criminals.
Home insurance is widely available from high street providers, including banks, brokers, some leading department stores and even supermarkets. This is as well as obtaining fantastic deals on the web where you can obtain a home insurance quote and compare benefits and prices before making a decision to buy your home insurance.
If you are a tenant then you probably will not be paying buildings insurance, as this is a legal responsibility of the landlord or owner, but you can still take out a home insurance contents policy to protect your personal possessions, excluding those belonging to the landlord especially if you are renting a furnished property.
Whether you rent or own a property, home insurance is a must have policy to protect your building and your valuable possessions against the natural disasters than can occur and the possibility of theft or from accidental damage. Home insurance is probably the most popular form of non compulsory insurance sold in the UK and a home that is not protected by home insurance is a home just waiting for a problem.