It goes without saying that as an owner of a property it is essential that your asset is fully insured with an adequate level of cover for an appropriate sum. But what is an appropriate sum? This is not something that a lay person can readily assess but the implications of an inaccurate assessment are significant.
Over insure and you will pay excessive insurance premiums. This can be particularly significant for clients insuring medium to large portfolios of property or residential blocks.
More seriously, if you are under insured you run the risk of an insurance company limiting or even refusing to pay out on an insurance claim and leaving you in a perilous financial situation in the event of major damage.
Under insurance can occur when:
For owners of individual dwellings or those with a duty to insure residential blocks, Peter Barry are able to assist in providing what is known as a Reinstatement Cost Assessment (RCA). This is a calculation to provide a figure representing the cost to reinstate a property in the event of it being destroyed.
It is generally recommended that a Reinstatement Cost Assessment is updated every three years or more frequently if a property has been extended or altered. It is therefore important to have a periodic and professional assessment of your property to calculate a suitable sum.
This involves an inspection of the building to understand the age, accommodation and construction, taking measurements and running a calculation to industry standards.
If you are responsible for insuring a building and are not confident that you are insured for an adequate sum, please do not hesitate to send a message via our Contact Us page, or call our team on 020 7183 2578 for more information and a free quote.
The common stereotype is that architects ‘draw pretty pictures’ of buildings. That may be true – the presentation of information is important, but it only scratches the surface of our role.Our output includes both drawn and written information. The drawings are in reality diagrams that record a complex and many ... Read More >>
It used to be common for party wall awards to include an obligation for the building owner to ‘maintain or cause contractor(s) to maintain adequate insurance against such risks and provide evidence of this upon demand by the adjoining owner’s surveyor contractor’ and this was generally interpreted as the relatively ... Read More >>
I often tell adjoining owners that have suffered damage as a result of party wall work not to, under any circumstances, enter into discussions directly with their neighbours’ builder. By giving such advice, I’m not trying to make life difficult for building owners but rather making the point that under the Act it is the ... Read More >>