UKC

Could anyone help me out with an idea of what it is costing for buildings cover on a 3 bedroom non-listed house these days.

I'm just trying to fathom out how seriously I am getting stitched up due to the presumed reinstatement cost of our grade 2 listed farmhouse in the event of a total loss.

I'm paying £250 for buildings (£1m) and contents £85k).

I paid £135 for buildings and contents last month so it obviously depends where you live.

Paid £200 last week for building and contents for a 3 bed 1950s house in Somerset (not including legal cover)

I’m curious what your quote is?

My current quote for renewal is just over £2k for the building before adding the contents cover. The best quite that I can find is £1.9k.

The problem is that whilst we would want a nice 3 bed house if it burnt to the ground, insurers want us to insure for the risk that the planners would insist on us creating a fake replica of a rambling old farmhouse that was built in random stages between 1690ish and 1920.

The presumed cost to clear the site and then rebuild a copy building is £2.1 million, if I claim that it would cost less and the worst happens any payout on a claim would be reduced accordingly.

The problem is that I have to insure against the risk that the planners would require me to rebuild a fake rambling 17th to 20th century farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks all , that confirms my suspicions that I am being shafted by circumstances that are effectively beyond my control.

Oof. And to think my wife grumbled about ours being £220 after I added on legal cover.

Do you know that it’s the rebuild cost that’s the issue? That number seems high but not astronomical enough to explain the scale of your quote (though I realise that’s your point)

It is hard to see what else it could be. We are fortunate enough to live in a quiet area with no flood risk, no large trees near the house, far enough from a public road to safely say that a vehicle impact is unlikely and can honestly say that the house is generally occupied night and day. We can give good positive answers to all of the risk based questions apart from some of the door locks but even if I switch those to the best high security option the quoted premium does not budge.

if I adjust the rebuild cost in online comparison sites the premium appears to move in proportion with the figure that I enter.

Try the NFU, I think they are better than online companies for listed property.

But if your house burns down and the insurance payout wasn't enough to rebuild exactly "as was", can you not build a smaller replica then sell it with planning permission for a massive extension? 

FWIW our house insurance went up loads this year, we used a broker and they said it was across the board.

Is it worth having a surveyor give a professional opinion on the rebuild cost if that's the problem? 

Sadly they are my current insurer, Im finding onine quotes for about £200 less than my current renewal quote but it doesn't seem possible but it does not seem possible to find the sort of saving that is necessary to bring thee numbers down to a long term sensible or sustainable level.

Apparently it would all come down to what the planners are willing to allow or expect you to do.

My attitude is that I would build a nice little bungalow that would meet all our needs and be simpler to maintain than the existing house. I could take the attitude that I would understate the rebuild costat £500k, in which case the claim would probably be scaled back to 25% of insured cost leaving me with £125k plus the vallue of the existing site to build something that would meet our needs.

Sadly the farmhouse is very much in the farmyard so we would then have the cost of moving the existing yard to make the site desirable to any potential buyers.

We are kind of stuck in all directions on this one.  The rules that apply to listed buildings appear to be the problem and I find it really hard to see what value an large fake olde  worlde farmhouse would deliver for wider society.  Two nice affordable 2 bed houses on the same site would surely be far more beneficial?

Our policy, renewed a couple of weeks ago for £180, states my rebuilding costs are "unlimited". We're with Tesco - not sure if they are on comparison sites, but if not maybe worth a look?

That is kind of what got us into this mess, it was surveyed  years ago at not inconsiderable cost and that has been index linked since then. I have a nasty feeling that surveying it again could just make things even worse.

Its a lovely house and is our home but if it was destroyed we just wouldn't seek to recreate what was gone.

Thanks I'll have a go.

I suspect that they may one of the long list of insurers that will not touch listed buildings but it is worth a try.

My house is grade 2 listed and insured at reasonable cost with Admiral.

The rebuild cost is quite a bit more than market value but it doesn't seem to have impacted much on insurance costs. It is a small cottage so not comparable size-wise to yours. 

Having spent some time looking into it this morning it appears that as a rule of thumb buildings insurance is about £100 per £100k of esrimated rebuilding cost.

The problem is that being listed seriously increases the estimated rebuild cost.

I guess that is fine if you are weather enough to have made the choice to live in such a house but it is painful when you are earning less than minimum wage and footing a hefty bill to insure a building that has been listed under what appears to be a pretty random system.  Checking up on other local houses that are very similar in age and style some were listed in 1959, others were added to the register at the planning stage when they were renovated or extended and others seem to have cruised through multiple renovations and extensions without being noticed.

As our 17 year old daughter observed it seems unjust that we are saddled with over £1500 extra in costs every year because the nation has decided that our house should remain as it is for evermore.

At present it is looking likely that I will have to stop the building insurance and let "the nation" sort out exactly what it wants to do with our home if the unthinkable happens

our grade 2 listed insurance was renewed a few weeks ago, £650 ish. 3 bed detached from 1830s, with open building control on it (ie, works ongoing that could temporarily raise risk of damage).

Ours was listed 2003, if only the previous owners had changed the windows before then, it wouldn't have been listed.

Has anyone asked the planners what their opinion is?

The thought has crossed my.mind but their planning decisions suggest that their opinions can change from one year to the next and initiating contact with bureaucracy has been known to yield unexpected and undesirable results

Planning doesn't require fake historic houses to be built.  If something is lost, new plans will need to meet current planning and be sympathetic but there is no requirement to produce faux historic buildings.  If your insurance quotes are so high, it suggests to me something else is going on.

This might be useful?

http://www.islands.insure/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Islands-Rebuild-Sheet-...

Our building costs are somewhat higher than mainland UK due to lack of economy of scale & high costs of freight and everything else, but you can extrapolate and compare things.

The insurance on my Dad's 1970's 4 bed cavity-build chalet bungalow were about the same for my old 1890s listed house (£500p.a., but insurance is historically cheap here due to a lack of crime)  I don't think there's enough evidence on claims for listed buildings to know what the planners would want.  Is there a precedence in the UK for requiring a facsimile build?  I could understand partial repairs needing sympathetic construction methods to dovetail in with what remains, but a whole building?

"Insuring a listed building needs one very special consideration: If disaster strikes you will be required by law to reinstate using traditional materials and methods matching the original, irrespective of cost."

Have you got any ideas on what else might be going on?

I have spoken to 3 brokers this morning and they all agree that there is nothing in my answers to the stock questions or our postcode that would bump the price up and that it is only the surveyors estimate of rebuild cost that appears to be influencing the price. They also say that the uniform quotes that they are getting are very much in line with what they would expect.

Maybe our local planners have been found to be unusually bolshy?

I have a neighbour that is doing a rebuild on the site of an old timber framed barn and they wouldnt let him reuse the old timbers but did insist that it should have a tin roof because the original slate roof had been replaced with corrugated tin at  some point during its life.  That building was not even listed!

Actually, if it isn't destroyed but damaged, even severely, I can see reinstatement might be insisted on and that would cost. (Make sure it burns to the ground!) You do seem to be getting quite 5+ times what is typical though, which is odd 

We once lived in a barn conversion that had these awfully muddy brown colour windows that the planners put into the conversion permission that couldn't be changed. 

The reason they were that god awful colour?  We spoke to the farmer, and when the windows needed painting all he did was gather up all the old half used tins of paint he had or anything cheap at the local DIY shop, mix em all together and paint the windows with whatever colour came out! Nothing at all to do with any local traditions etc and this was a non listed building not in a conservation area. Bonkers.

It may not be of help, but Historic England has detailed guidance on insuring historic buildings here: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/insuring-historic-...

In defence of listed building laws:

The system of listing buildings is not random, although there are gaps as some areas have received less attention than others and some old buildings have yet to be identified. Historic England publishes listing criteria on their website with guides on each building type. For domestic buildings, there is a presumption that any building predating 1700 in anything like its original form should be listed. If you own a seventeenth century farmhouse this is considered of national importance. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/selection-criteria/listing-selection...

I don't know how often planning authorities actually insist on reinstatement of destroyed listed buildings, but public opinion generally seems to favour it, even if people in the conservation world don't. 

Historic Buildings are very vulnerable to fire, not necessarily due to their construction, but because they are often inconvenient to property developers. You say yourself that two smaller houses on your site may be more beneficial. Imagine how many more buildings would mysteriously burn down if planning policy stated an accidental fire was all that was needed to build something more profitable on the land.

I think that smaller houses would be more affordable and of greater benefit to those who live and work in the area. I'm not aure that this would be more profitable for a developer.

My thinking was that planning laws ought to favour affordable homes over large and expensive flashy homes for the wealthy.

We've got an unusual house, built in 1860, listed, former railway station on an active line.  The (still used) platform sits immediately next to our back wall.  It's also a bit odd in that it's actually 2 separate houses, a 3 bed and a 2 bed, although we treat the 2 bed bit like an annex.

We had it surveyed when we moved in and got a rebuild cost of £300,000.  I've since upped that to £500k, but in reality there's a large element of 'how long's a piece of string' as the difference in cost between Network Rail and the planners making life easy, and making it hard is probably at least £0.5m.  We currently pay £1200 for buildings and insurance cover with NFU.

In practice there's a good chance that Network Rail would completely refuse permission to build in the same location, at which point I will hope the fact that it's on a decent size plot and some of the land is a bit further from the line would give us some options.  80% of the time I love the house, but 20% of the time I think we should have bought something far less 'interesting'.

Thanks those guides are really useful.

To be clear on what I am currently thinking about the situation I understand the desire to preserve old buildings and very much agree with that sentiment. I am not so sure of the value of recreating them if they are destroyed, it may make sense for particularly rare buildings but we are not exactly short of old farmhouses in our area.

Our house is first and foremost a home, that is what it was first built for and that is what it has always been over many years for many families. It is a home that we would want if it destroyed and that is what we would expect from our insurance. 

Iit seems crazy that we are lumbered with a large insurance bill to cover the risk of having to recreate a building for the benefit of others. If others wanted it recreated at a time when we were homeless due to extreme misfortune then they ought to pay for it.

I agree with you, with the caveat that I also think our built heritage should be conserved.

Have you got any data or references to back up the claim that we are being quoted 5 time what is typical for grade 2 listed homes?

If I can prove that and work out why then I can start working on a solution.

Only anecdotal, sorry.  

It seems to directly contradict the information that I am getting that £100/£100K is typical.

Im left wondering why you are repeatedly asserting that there must be some reason that I am being charged 5 times the going rate without real information to back it up?

?? I don't think I am repeating anything but looking at my insurance and others here, that does indeed seem to be the case.

That should have said £1200 for buildings and content cover.  Looking at the breakdown £850 of that is the building cover.

In the OP's case, I think it's worth asking the question of what would happen if sufficient cover was not in place for a like-for-like rebuild.  I suspect there would be a way forward with the planners, could be worth talking to an expert to understand this in more detail.  I'm sure the advice wouldn't come with guarantees, but you should get enough to decide whether it's worth taking a risk and dropping the rebuild value with your insurer.

Your figures looked to be about the lowest that anyone quoted, is that for a listed building that is declared as such with your insurers?

It was all a lot simpler before the insurance regulations dictated that your agent shouldn't allow you to go uncorrected  when you chose rebuild cost that you naively believed to be adequate.

My troubles all started when I spoke to an expert that offered his expensive advice with very few guarantees.

I was blissfully unaware that I was under insured and the balance of probability this that nothing would ever have happened to make me regret my lacking cover.

What you describe is par for the course for listed buildings. They are part of the nation's architectural heritage and any damage has to be replaced like for like. That's both the priviledge and burden of owning one.

My brother in law has had a similar problem recently with the added complication that it's a thatched roof. They had to have all the log burners taken out because of the fire risk and with the rebuild cost being over £2million (even though the market value is less than that) they were left with only one insurer who would even give them a quote. I think they are paying about £3k now.

They are in the process of investigating other insurers who give bespoke quotes based on an actual visit to the property in the hope that if their current insurer pulls the plug next renewal time they'll actually be able to get any cover at all, otherwise they'll be sitting on a £2million+ liability should it burn down. One of the insurers they are looking into is called something like Farmer's Mutual.

Aren't there any listed buildings forums out there where you could ask?

That makes a lot of sense when you are talking about large and conspicuous monuments such as York Minster or Windsor Castle and will also make sense for large and grand stately home etc.

Right now it seems like far more of a burden than a privilege to own our home, it is not a lifestyle choice it is just the lifelong home that  comes with the farm. To be forced to separate it from the working entity that is the source of it's existence in order to save money would seem as sacriligous as an insensitive and ostentatious refurbishment as a show of wealth. We are effectively the last farm in the area where a house of this age has not been divorced from the farm for financial salvation or just pure greed and there is surely as much heritage value in that as there is in the bricks and mortar of the house alone?

I really struggle to see any significant value to wider society of enforcing the same rule for genuine family homes such as old cottages and farmhouses as we do for larger and grander status buildings. All it does is create fake period houses that will be beyond the financial means of the majority of homebuyers.  We already have plenty of those in the form of barn converions and new builds in the countryside.

Your brother in laws situation sounds very similar to ours even doen to the estimated rebuild costs and their quotes are almost exactly the same as ours which is almost as reassuring as it is disappointing.  Our current £2k cost is with NFU Mutual and most brokers are quoting at least £3k if they are able to quote at all.  The only cheaper option was on  price comparison sites that offered £1.8k from Swintons but when I checked that was not as comprehensive cover as our current policy.

The issue, as you say, is that the same controls are applicable to museum pieces and functional buildings.

While councils are in principle able to distinguish between the two,  they are often unwilling to do so. Even where they are, planning officers lack the expertise to make a judgement and so create hoops to jump through which are costly.

Anecdotally, and looking at what previous occupants have done with my house, this deters compliance and pushes owners toward poor solutions. In the case of our building, the off-books work we inherited has caused a lot of damage. Rectifying that damage through the proper planning process could have cost anything between £800 and £10,000 - we have a 16th century structure but the internals are a combination of very unexceptional 1890s and deeply unimportant 1960s modifications.

​​​​​​It's hard to convey the silliness of the current situation without going into dissertation mode. But it's a common theme among owners of similar properties (a large part of local housing stock - not because we're part of a very moneyed country mansion set) and specialist and generalist builders I know.

Most of these people do actually care, like the OP, and try to do things the right way. But it isn't very easy. I feel that if the government/society want people's homes to be museum pieces, they need to subsidise things like the generation of heritage statements and allow claim-back of VAT from specialist works and materials. 

Myself, I would prefer to speak to my friendly specialist in heritage building (builder, not a desk-jockey) and quietly DIY things. The (mainly theoretical) risk this involves in an unhappy stress, though.

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Lots of good points there.  I think we're very lucky that our local council conservation team are pragmatic and helpful.  If we need to do work, I'll email them details and ask if it needs a formal application.  Most of the time they just tell me they've logged it in the system and I can crack on, often with some advice on materials etc.  Occasionally they make us do a full application, but it's rare and has always seemed reasonable.

The end result of this is that they know about most of the work we've done, and I'm happy to listen when they say 'no' as I know there is a good reason.  Friends in neighbouring counties find their conservation team's very hard work, as a result a lot of work gets done without any consultation.

Same here, if you work with the planners rather than against them you get somewhere.

I am certainly no expert on insurance, but are you not over insuring here?

Surely you only need cover for what the property is worth to you.

Let's say the house is worth £500k, and within that, the land on it's own is worth £100k.

If it burnt down, would you not need £400k to cover your loss, sell the land and walk away.

There's no requirement to re-build the house. The council can't force you to do that.

Maybe the above doesn't compute with insurance companies, but when speaking to them is there any way to ask for re-build to be excluded and only insure for the value of the property?

That seems entirely logical and I have considered going down that road.

Sadly it is not quite that simple, if you are found to be under insured the claim is likely to be scaled back accordingly. These days the quoting process and advice that you are offered appears to be so well documented that it would be very hard to feign ignorance.

On top of that our home is still at the heart of our livestock farm and it's working yard. In order for the plot to have any value we would need to move the yard including at least 2 cattle sheds and a feed store.

In practice the simple answer would be to convert an existing barn just across the yard but that brings us into the realms of listed building consent and I'm concerned that the planners may not be too lenient of I was abandoning the site of the house.

The only answer I can see is that if society wants something then maybe society should foot the bill rather than  passing the costs onto individual homeowners.

While I’m far from certain on this, my understanding was that the council (or is it EH) has a legal responsibility to ensure listed buildings are maintained. If the owner doesn’t carry out the work/ rebuild then the council can do it and invoice the owner.

My first house was a 200 year old listed building and I had a decade of spending a lot of time and money maintaining it. We loved the house but vowed never to live in an old or listed building again.