Insurance for a maisonette

[Lily]

My upstairs neighbour & I normally pay £200 each to insure our part of the building. We do this via a broker. This year it's gone up by £40 each and I'm wondering why we go via a broker. He said that's the way they've always done it but he is happy for me to investigate doing it directly. Is there anything I need to look out for bearing in mind we split it between us? Is this a special "two property owner" insurance; or is it just standard insurance?

[Marth]

You will need to read the lease.

I lived in a leasehold property and the lease stated that insurance for all the properties owned by the same freeholder needed to be insured via their insurer and had to have a certain level of cover, Inc terrorism cover. We paid about 350 a year each.

It did say that we could go via a building society but only if they offered the exact same cover (they didn't).

It might be that you really don't need to be paying a broker (if you pay him)

[Lily]

Great, thank you.
Yes we pay the broker about £100 which is not to be sniffed at.

[Luna]

Flat insurance is different from standard insurance. You don’t need a broker to get it but you need to make sure the buildings part of the cover is correct.

[Skips]

We pay for a broker for the building insurance (for four flats, share of freehold) as they could get a much better price than we could independently. Definitely get some quotes before making a decision.

As Luna said, it's not the same as standard buildings insurance so make sure you are getting correct cover.

[Lily]

Thank you, I did think it might be a bit more complicated than just using GoCompare!