Sunday, January 06, 2008

Home Insurance : Make It A Safe Decision

By John Dale

Buying a home is often the single greatest financial commitment that we will ever make. The commitment in financial terms drives us to insure ourselves in the event of death or illness that may impair our ability to continue to pay for our homes so our families can continue to be safe and secure. Insuring the building itself is also equally crucial to making sure we protect our family and our homes.

In most of the cases it is required to put forward your building insurance to the mortgage lender for you to buy the mortgaged property. In order to ensure that you get the best deal, you require a lot of research in to this field. If you just go by the lender's word you may land up in situation where you buy very expensive insurance or it may not provide any cover that other schemes easily offer.

It is a point to note that the buildings cover in insurance does not include the fittings and other contents of the home like the furniture. There are several incidents where the insurance replaces a damaged roof or wall while they politely decline their offer for the furniture or your refrigerator. So it is always better to take some time and understand what all are covered under your home insurance policy.

If you want to protect your precious items then you will need to get them insured as well. There are combined insurance policies that you can get to protect your home as well as the items within. This is a much cheaper deal since everything is covered within the same insurance policy. But once again you must refer to different insurance companies and deals they offer before finalizing anything since difference companies have different quotation for same set of items.

Arranging home insurance is simple and easy to do. Not only is it simple to set up but the cost is usually not prohibitive. If you are setting up a policy on a new home, it pays to check what the seller's previous claims history has been as this may give you some warning of issues that are otherwise not apparent from a simple inspection of the property. If they have been claiming for burglary for instance, how often and if it is a common occurrence what does that say of the neighbourhood?

Assessing the value to be insured for the buildings cover is something that you will be able to determine from any valuation or surveyor's report. Different methods exist to determine the insured value with some insurers requiring that you assess the insured value for the full sales price or more, to include such things as site clearance, while others require a lower insured value to take into account the fact you own the land.

Assessing the value for contents cover is usually a surprise for policy holders. It often comes as something of a shock when someone sits down and actually works out how much things would cost to replace that are within the home. Carpets can cost thousands alone, and then of course there kitchen appliances, electronic equipment and a host of other items that very rapidly swell the total value of what we have accumulated.

Protecting our home is of utmost importance but it will go a long way if you do a little bit of research before making the final decision. It is recommended that you read the terms and conditions clearly because sometimes there are some factors that might affect the insurance greatly.

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