Comparing home insurance - what you will need ready

Before you start to compare home insurance quotes, you’ll need to be able to tell us:

• The approximate rebuild value of the property you want to insure – don’t worry if you don’t know exactly, just tell us the rough amount
• Details of the types of locks on the doors and windows of the property
• Roughly how old the property is
• The rough value of the contents of the property and any items worth over £500
• Details of your current home insurance deal, your no claims bonus, and any claims you’ve made

Ways to reduce home and contents insurance costs

There are a number of ways to reduce the cost of your home contents insurance – here are our top five:

• Try not to make a claim on your home insurance unless you’re really left with no alternative – the fewer claims you make, the lower your premium should be
• Make your home more secure by fitting good quality locks to all accessible doors and windows, and consider fitting a burglar alarm
• Fit and regularly test a smoke alarm
• Increase the excess – the higher the voluntary excess, the lower your home insurance premium should be
• Insurers tend to offer cheaper home insurance premiums if your house is occupied – if you go on holiday for more than 28 days at a time and leave the property unoccupied, they could charge you extra

For more ideas on how to reduce your home insurance costs,read our home insurance guides .