There are two types of home insurance:

Contents insurance

Contents insurance provides protection for your valuables and covers your home contents against loss or damage by theft or attempted theft, flood, storm, fire, explosion, lightning or earthquake.

When running a quote you might find it helpful to work out the value of the contents of each room in turn before adding them together for your grand total. We’ll ask you about the value of expensive single items in your home, such as laptops, bicycles and items worth more than £1,000, to ensure your possessions are adequately covered. 

Buildings insurance

You can reduce the cost of home insurance by taking out a combined buildings and contents insurance policy with an insurer that offers a discount if you buy both types from them.

Buildings insurance covers the cost of repairs or rebuilding works to the structural parts of your home. It provides protection for your home from flooding, fire and storms. The amount of buildings cover you need is based on how much it would cost to rebuild your property, rather than its market value. When you run a buildings insurance quote, we’ll suggest a re-build amount using data about your address provided by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

What information do I need to run a home insurance quote?

There are a few details you’ll need to provide to get your quote…

• Details about your property: Your address, the type of property, number of rooms, what percentage of the roof is flat and roughly when it was built.  
• Who lives at your property: Including when people are typically at home. 
• Exterior of your property: How many trees taller than 10 metres are within five metres of the property. 
• Rebuilding cost & value of contents: Based on your postcode, we’ll suggest a figure for rebuilding 
• Security at your property: What sort of locks are on the doors and windows

What kind of insurance should I get?

If you own your home, then you will need both buildings and contents insurance. If you have a mortgage, your bank or building society will require you to have buildings insurance.

If you’re a renting your property, then buildings cover will be the responsibility of your landlord, but you will need contents cover to protect your possessions.

How can I save on my home insurance?

Don’t be tempted to scrimp on cover to reduce your premiums. There are other ways you can keep costs down which won’t leave you financially exposed.

When buying cover, remember that taking out combined building and contents cover with the same insurer can be cheaper than buying separate policies.

You could consider increasing your voluntary excess to reduce your premium. This is the part of any insurance claim you have to pay yourself.

Try to pay for your cover in a lump sum up-front if you can. If you pay in monthly instalments instead, you’ll usually have to pay interest on these payments.  

And remember that if you can avoid making a claim, you’ll get lower premiums by building up a no claims bonus.

Level of service

We aim to show you home insurance quotes from as many insurance companies as possible, so that you can find the right policy for you.

Unfortunately, we can’t promise to show quotes from every insurance provider, because not all companies want to be included on comparison websites.

We won’t offer you advice or make a recommendation, but we will provide you with all the information you need to help you decide which is the right policy for you.

You can find out more about how we work here.