[mgbridges]

Hi folks,

Our insurance is up for renewal and I'm trying to get an idea of whether we are under or over insured. When we first took the insurance out I rather plucked a number out of the air - for the building what we purchased it for, for the contents what we insured our container for. However, I've no idea whether these are realistic figures in NZ.

We have a large 3 bed + study, double garage home, weatherboard construction. We don't have any antiques or particularly valuable bits of furniture although OH does have a large CD collection.

If its not too personal a question how much do you insure your home & contents for? Or alternatively what sort of NZ$ range do you think we should be insuring for?

Also if anyone has been overly impressed with a particular company it would be good to know. We are currently with AMI and have all our insurances with them to get the discount.

Thanks in advance,
Anneliese

[jubjub]

I think our contents are insured for around $90k... that was the figure they estimated for a 3 bed home with garage. We did try and figure it all out, and reckoned we could replace the contents with that. We dont own anything flash either.

Buildings insurance, i havent got a clue, its just based on the sq ft and the construction of the house from what I can tell...

As we have never had to yet claim I have no idea what the customer service would be like, but we are currently with state for the house and the cars to get a bulk discount. Worked out cheaper overall that way,

[Georgebulldog]

This reminds me we have no contents insurance yet :wah :exit

[Milliemoo]

Hi,

We use State. Haven't made a claim, but when I've phoned in about advise, they've always been very helpful.

We used our inventory from the shipping comany as a guide as all the hard work of listing everything we own and putting values to it (£ & $) had already been done for the shipping insurance. We've also bout some new things since we've been here so needed to increase the cover half way through the year.

The one thing i will say is that you will be surprised how much everything tots up to. I'll send you an email with what we are insured for, and you will probably be shocked. We do have cover for my engagement ring and a couple of other named items. As you know, our home isn't super flash or anything, but I think a lot of people under insure themselves.

On a very serious note, it's very important to be as acurate as possible because if for example your house burns to the ground and you make a claim for all your stuff, if the insurance company thinks youv'e been inadequaitley insured, they won't pay out the full amount. It doens't matter if you think 'Oh I don't mind $75k is more than enough for us to buy new stuff', if the assessors think your stuff was actually closer to the value of $100k they could choose not to pay you anything at all making the claim null and void, or only pay out on a ratio of what you've been insured for, in this example 75% of $75k.

Hope that makes sense :o

Cath x

[James 1077]

With respect to the building's insurance the question is what is your building worth? When you buy a property it is generally accepted that the land normally appreciates in value and the building depreciates. Repairs etc stem the building's depreciation but only extensions, renovations or the building type suddenly becoming fashionable will make the building value go up.

If your building insurance is at the price you paid for it then it is probably over-insured as, even if the building was burnt to the ground, you would still have the ground! You sort of need to estimate a total replacement cost for the building - which can be hard!

My advice is to ask a neighbour what they are doing or perhaps a friendly estate agent would tell you how much your building is worth (they probably don't have anything else to do at the moment!).

[Milliemoo]

With respect to the building's insurance the question is what is your building worth? When you buy a property it is generally accepted that the land normally appreciates in value and the building depreciates. Repairs etc stem the building's depreciation but only extensions, renovations or the building type suddenly becoming fashionable will make the building value go up.

If your building insurance is at the price you paid for it then it is probably over-insured as, even if the building was burnt to the ground, you would still have the ground! You sort of need to estimate a total replacement cost for the building - which can be hard!

My advice is to ask a neighbour what they are doing or perhaps a friendly estate agent would tell you how much your building is worth (they probably don't have anything else to do at the moment!).

That's a good point actually. In Scotland whenever you get a survey done on a home it always states the property value and the cost to rebuild separately. Do they do that when you get a survey done here?

Milliemoo

[Familyofmonkeys]

Our contents insurance is for $116k......this is based on replacement value we workled out from our shipping inventory so it is pretty accurate. We don't own any fancy gizmos or expensive jewellery or clothes, but when you add up the replacement costs of things like CD's & DVD's, books and kitchen accessories/crockery/cutlery etc it is shocking how much it all comes to. Make sure any higher value items are named as well or you might not be fully covered....for us our bikes, treadmill and laptops needed to be named on the policy, although this didn't increase the premium at all.