Contents cover for unoccupied house?

Sadly, we are looking after my dads house who is no longer with us and having notified his Insurers, they have given 31 days until the policy is voided.

There are some really crazy quotes coming through for vacant property cover, and getting into the thousands is when cover for contents kicks in.  I completely appreciate the risk profile for the property is now probably as bad as it can be for an Insurer, so wondered if anyone had any good experience or decent premiums offered for this kind of thing.

Plan B will be to put all his contents into secure storage and just get buildings cover.

We are in the same situation with my F-i-L house, until the sale goes through. We have to go to the house every 2 weeks as part of the insurance and it has some odd clauses but it wasn’t crazily expensive as I recall?

Hi @rockhopper70, sorry for your loss.

I run a small commercial broker and look at this sort of cover daily. Happy to take a butchers, DM me if you wish.

Sadly un-occupied Insurance is not the cheapest.

Try these people:. We’ve just used them and cover was £790.

Coversure
45 Market Square, Bicester, OX26 6AJ
01869 388021
sophielo@coversure.co.uk
http://www.coversure.co.uk/bicester

Thanks for the tips all, I may yet follow these up.  There are six children, so getting a consensus is never easy….

Yes it is expensive, we got someone to move in.   I suspect it covers the risk with pipes freezing, more obvious target for burglary etc.

Stating the obvious but anything sentimental is not going to be ‘replaced’ by insurance.  If you remove anything sentimental and anything valuable (presumably just pictures and electrical items and the like) what is left that you can ‘afford’ to lose?

Might be worth taking a risk on everything else as overall value probably isn’t significant?

Same experience. It’s expensive and you still have to visit regularly.

But I’d advise it as it’s winter. I was in the same situation a couple of years ago. The useless probate office took almost a year, which pushed us into winter. The heating oil ran out because we screwed up, then the pipes froze and burst which flooded the house. That got VERY expensive.

What’s actually in there?

When my mum passed last year, I immediately removed anything of actual value. What’s left there now is furniture, a telly, white goods and assorted random stuff none of which is mine so holds no value to me. If it was burgled tomorrow they’d be doing me a favour.

The useless probate office took almost a year,

Probate for my mum took 10 days.

Unoccupied housing insurance is brutally expensive. I ended up getting cover from Adrian Flux, maybe get a quote from them too?

Probate for my mum took 10 days.

I think this varies regionally. I read an article recently with various examples of it taking up to nine months.

This was in 2022-2023 when the probate office was struggling badly. You couldn’t even ask for a status update until 16 weeks had passed, and they counted the 16 weeks from the day they scanned the application into their system, not the day you submitted it, and their scanning dept had a 4-week backlog at the time…

But it still takes up to 12 weeks, so I understand.

It may be much better for you. I just wanted to share my experience because it was long and difficult. You might want to consider turning the water off and draining the system, for example!

Edit: Yes, I think there was something of a postcode lottery. My application was processed by a regional office that worked only with paper documents, not electronic, which was annoying considering they’d taken a month to get it into their computer system 😀

I think this varies regionally. I read an article recently with various examples of it taking up to nine months.

Interesting, postcode lottery hadn’t occurred to me. I put it down to simplicity. My mum had a bank account and a terraced house, no other assets, no debts, no credit cards. No finance. I was the sole beneficiary.

The executors of the will were me and her solicitor which, knowing my mum, she would have put in place to make things easier for me. I had to pay them a couple of hundred quid to them to instruct them to do nothing, then I ran the figures through gov.uk. They quote a turnaround as a minimum of 16 weeks, longer if it’s a complicated case, the reasoning apparently being that there is an artificial delay inserted to allow other interested parties time to respond. Of which there were none, everybody’s dead Dave. I had the paperwork back inside of two weeks.

Last time I delt with this I just didn’t insure the place.

Calculated risk but it saved me about 2 grand.

My Father’s house was insured with SAGA. When he went into a care home and subsequently died they continued to insure it at a reasonable price.