With any home renovation project, there are innumerable details to be considered and preparations to be made – plans to be drawn up by architects and engineers, maybe, planning permission to be obtained and building contracts to be signed.
One of the additional – but no less essential – details is to arrange suitable home renovation insurance.
Why is that and what does it cover?
Your existing insurance cover
When you launch a renovation project, your regular home building and contents insurance – or landlord insurance, if it is buy to let property – is unlikely to continue to provide the cover you need:
- structural damage to the existing building is a major concern to your current insurers, for example, who are likely to exclude any such risk during the building works or may cancel cover altogether; whilst
- the fact that the property is also likely to lie empty and unoccupied for the duration of the works is a further cause for concern by your current insurers, who may again remove cover once no one has been living there for a period of 30 to 45 consecutive days or so (the precise period varying from one insurer to another).
In addition to any concern that building an extension or other renovation works might cause structural damage to the existing property, insurers also recognise that an unoccupied property remains vulnerable to damage caused by vandals, arsonists or other intruders. Even a dripping tap which gets progressively worse, may develop into a major flooding incident if no one is at home to report the need for immediate repair.
What home renovation insurance covers
As specialists and experts in home renovation insurance, at UKinsuranceNET, we arrange cover to replace the home insurance or landlord insurance that normally covers your property – ensuring that the premises remain protected by suitable cover during the building works you have planned.
On a standalone basis, it provides the cover against structural risks to your existing building – so paving the way for you simply to increase the total building sum insured under your normal home insurance or landlord insurance once the renovation works are complete.
Whenever the house needs to be vacated during the building works, domestic renovation insurance also provides the level of unoccupied property insurance you choose as a defence against the many things that might go wrong when there is no one living there on a day-to-day basis.
Renovation insurance provides a suitable solution whether the home is one in which you intend to return to live as the owner occupier or one that is to be let to tenants on completion of the building works.
The majority of home renovation projects are likely to be complete well within the year. Rather than your having to spend the money on premiums that cover an entire 12 months (as is usual for most types of insurance cover), our specialist home renovation insurance policies may be bought for just the period you need for the completion of the project – say, six or even just three months.
