What is home insurance?
Home insurance, also called house insurance, is a general term used to describe the two main ways to insure you home. These are buildings insurance and contents insurance.
When you buy home or house insurance, you can buy buildings insurance and home contents insurance separately. You can also buy them together in a single home insurance policy to protect your house. This is often called ‘home and contents’ insurance, buildings and contents insurance, or home and buildings insurance.
Home insurance pays out an agreed amount when you make a claim. You pay a house insurance company an amount every month for those safety net in case you need to make a claim. This is called the premium.
Buildings and contents insurance, what’s the difference?
Contents insurance
Contents insurance covers everything that would move with you if you moved house or flat. For example, your sofa and TV, kitchen appliances and personal belongings.
Contents insurance can be valuable to everyone, including renters and council tenants. You’ll need to compare contents insurance quotes to get the best home contents insurance deal. Make sure you check exactly what the content insurance covers. It may specifically exclude those expensive, portable electronics you regularly take out of the home, like a new mobile phone or laptop. This is both because they are very attractive items for thieves due to their small size and high value, and are regularly taken away from the home where they can easily be damaged, lost or stolen. You can find gadget insurance for these items instead, if they are not covered by your home and contents insurance.
There are several types of home contents cover so make sure you compare home contents insurance deals to get the best one for you. Contents insurance will typically cover you up to £50,000.
Building insurance
Buildings insurance covers the physical structure of your home, like the walls and the roof. Permanent fixtures and fittings, like your bathtub and kitchen cupboards, are also covered by buildings insurance.
You may need building insurance if you own your own house. Some mortgage lenders ask that you buy buildings insurance. You could compare buildings insurance quotes to get the best buildings insurance deal for you.
What does home insurance cover?
Different home and contents insurance companies will provide different levels of cover. So the cheapest home and contents insurance may not be the best cover for you.
Typically buildings and contents insurance will cover the cost of repair if your house is damaged by:
- Falling trees.
- Fire, smoke and explosions.
- Water damage from leaking pipes.
- Vandalism.
- Subsidence (where there are problems with physical structure of your house building).
- Oil leaks from from your heating system.
- Floods and storms.
