Buying a Shared Ownership Property – Insurance

moving house, our new living room, insurance

Insurance for insurance, and more insurance for that insurance. Oh, and by the way, would you like to write your will? That’s what this last month has felt like. 

Insurance is one of those things which is making me SO cross right now. There are so many things which need insuring; things we’ve never had to think about before. 

The plus side is by buying a Shared Ownership property the housing association takes care of the buildings insurance. Though as I’ve found out, if a tile falls off your new build roof, you can spend anything up to two days wondering when someone is going to let you know what’s going on. It’s slightly better than renting. 

The down side is the things you have to insure. We changed address on our contents insurance and were charged an additional £20 fee. I’d love to know how they can justify that charge – surely it’s just pressing a button?

Then again when we rented we’d be charged a £50 annual fee for paperwork. The letting agents occasionally remembered to send us a copy once we had signed it too.

We’ve got car insurance covered. Well, apart from the fact that our policy we had went up way too high, so we re-did it via Compare the Market and got a price similar to the one we originally did. There’s no logic there… at all. 

We have life cover dating back to 2003 which was a jolly sensible thing to do. The majority of our cover costs us next to nothing each month, whereas to top it up to our mortgage amount costs us almost double the original amount. Because it’s through the same company we get a small monthly discount too which is handy. 

I’m thinking ahead. While I feel like my job is safe, who knows what is going to happen after Brexit. So I need to make sure our mortgage payments are covered – so there’s another type of insurance that looks after that. 

Our solicitor cheekily mentioned us making a will. I’ve seen that Macmillan are offering free wills for the month of August, so if we can get our act together quickly enough, hopefully we can do it, otherwise I’ll be on the lookout for the next time we can. 

Can I have a month off all this grown up stuff please? 

Contents Insurance

We’ve just renewed our insurance policy, and as I was about to pay the nice chap on the phone said “would you like to take out Personal Possessons cover which would cover your valuables outside of the home?”

Big gulp.

You mean we hadn’t already? It was an oversight, but one we’ve put right now. On the plus side this cost us £40 for the year so I can cancel our monthly phone insurance policies I’ve been paying for the last god knows how long. I had no idea we had no cover and had assumed it was included in the policy.

So really just a heads-up – make sure you’re covered! If something had happened to our phones, iPads or laptops we wouldn’t have been covered – and that doesn’t bear thinking.