Why house insurance is/will be going up.

[harryagain]

[jgh]

whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk across a lot of people. If the risk gets greater the cost spread across all the people of course gets greater.

JGH

[harryagain]

> The whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk

But if insurance companies can get low risk clients they make more money. The only way they can do this is by offering lower rates. Also, there has to be some benifit if you "flood proof "your house. (ie cheaper insurance) And there has to be something to dissuade builders from building houses in stupid places.

Why should I pay out for the idiots?

Should my car insurance be more because some people have low driving skills?

[Brian Gaff]

I live on top of a hill though...

Brian

[Roberts]

>> I agree with Brian, having lived near a river when young, when I bought my

Robbie

>

[michael adams]

>>> The whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk

Unfortunately this is the basis of all insurance.

If you never make any claims yourself then you're effectively subsidising all the smartarses - who try to claim for anything and who'll take up assesors and loss adjusters time (and wages) even if unsuccessful, and the morons whose successful claims are nevertheless often the result of self-inflicted stupidity.

But there again even in the early days of Llloyds coffee house probably some of the ships that were lost at sea, were the result of dumb decisions by captains who were drunk at the time. But as all hands were lost who's to know ?

The main problem is that people can act stupidly in any number of ways, in any given situation, even people who might not be stupid in other ways. It might be possible to measure this - by ways of batteries of tests - phsycological profiling etc but this would probably cost more to administer - given the cost would presumably need to be spread amongst everyone taking the tests than the present arrangement. And again such tests would presumably be open to appeal. All the driving test and similar can measure are a candidate's ability to impress an examiner for an hour or so by following a well practised routines.

michael adams

...

[tim.....]

whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk across a lot of people. If the risk gets greater the cost spread across all the people of course gets greater.

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Deliberately building a house (or estate of) in a flood plain is not an un-seeable risk.

Therefore it is not one that the costs of which *should* be shared by people who are not so stupid.

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

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exactly.

I have a premium for thatch. No one else is required to pay for that risk.

I get reasonable car insurance for being statistically unlikely to have an accident, and live in a low car theft area. Why should I pay for people who have ferraris in Brixton and are permanently smashed?

[dennis]

Your insurance should be cheap like mine should be. Your only flooding risk is from burst pipes/tanks. Not from being built on a flood plain.

[harryagain]

>>>>> The whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk

All worked out on past history.

[harryagain]

You need a wind turbine.

[SteveW]

>>> The whole point of insurance is that it spreads the risk

I'd consider it fair enough that everyone pays a bit more, so that people living in areas that were not thought to be very likely flood risks a few years ago but now find that they cannot get insurance after a couple of unusual events, will still be able to get affordable cover. That should not extend to recent building on known flood-plains.

SteveW

[Andy Champ]

It's funny you should mention that. We've just got our renewal, and they've changed the policy terms around impact from external moving objects.

It used to say "Collision with the buildings by any moving object from outside your home".

It now has 3 sections, covering damage caused by

- aircraft or other flying objects, vehicles or animals

- trees or branches

- TV aerials

I thought long and hard to work out what might have changed that would cause them to do this. What's the hazard now excluded that was becoming significant? Surely it couldn't be toy trains, or R/C cars?

Then it came to me. Wind turbines.

Andy

[harryagain]

Heh Heh! I wonder which flying animal they have in mind?

[John Williamson]

Another case would be where building took place in an area known not to flood, then flood defences in other areas moved the flood zones.

In much the same way as some sea defence works have caused major problems just along the coast.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , SteveW escribió:

+1.

Doesn't the Local Search during the conveyancing process flag this up? If not, it bloody well should. Or the banks and building societies should refuse to issue mortgages for those properties.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Brian Gaff escribió:

If the waters don't get you, the lightning will :-)

[John Williamson]

The local searches for this house and my previous home were both flagged as being at moderate risk of flooding.

I'm half a mile horizontally and a hundred feet vertically away from the nearest watercourse, but there are no flood defence works within a mile, so they got flagged as a moderate risk. I'm blowed if I can see *any* risk of flooding by external sources.

My house in Wales had a stream at the bottom of the garden and wasn't flagged as a flood risk, because there were flood defences and a weir about half a mile downstream. The garden and cellar flooded every decade or so, as did all the other cellars in the terrace.

[Jason Judge]

There are some fields - *many* fields - around a village near me that const= antly got flooded. The farmer could not reliably use the land for crops. So= it has all got sold off as building land. That, on top of the collapsing m= ine shafts in the same area, is going to be fun.

-- Jason

[Jason Judge]

The one that flies past the window when it comes to paying out on a claim.

-- Jason