Is Your Home Adequately Insured
In recent years, particularly since the Covid pandemic, there has been a significant increase in the cost of building materials, this coupled with the increased cost of labour has made building houses a lot more expensive. One of the consequences of this, which many homeowners are not aware of, is that many homes are now under insured. Whilst there has been some media coverage around this issue in recent times many people still make the mistake of insuring their home based on what they feel their home is worth and not what it would cost to rebuild.
In general, you should have adequate insurance on your home to cover the demolition of your home in the unfortunate even that the house is deemed a ‘write-off’ by the insurance company. The cover should then also include the rebuild cost of your home including any architect and engineers’ fees. The rebuild cost should include fixtures such as kitchen, sanitary ware etc. You should also include cover for any garages or outbuildings as well as driveway, patios etc that may have to be re-instated because of say an undetected leak in the oil tank. It is important you get professional advice as to what cover you require. There are several websites with Rebuild Calculators, but you should talk to your insurance company first and if necessary, contact a Quantity Surveyor, particularly if you are unsure of the size of your house.
It is important to remember that if an insurance assessor deems that you have under insured your house this could affect any level of claim you may make. For example, if you have storm damage of €40,000 and if you have your property insured for €400,000 when it should be €500,000 then an Insurance company might only pay out 80% (€32,000) of the cost of the claim you made because they deemed you to be only 80% covered.