Compare home insurance & building insurance quotes

*51% of customers received a quote of £129.25 or less for Buildings and contents insurance between August and October 2021, when using our journey via Confused.com

What is home insurance?

Home insurance, also called house insurance, is a type of insurance used to protect your home. There are two types of home insurance:

Home buildings insurance which covers the structure and potential rebuild of your property.

Home contents insurance which insures your furniture, fixtures and fittings and belongings inside your house or flat.

To buy home insurance you pay a house insurance company an amount every month, known as the premium. As long as your premium is paid on time each month your home will be covered for insurance risks such as fire, flood, subsidence, theft and other emergencies.

Combined home and content insurance: When you buy home or house insurance, you can buy building insurance and home contents insurance separately. You can also buy them together in a single home insurance policy to protect your house. This is often called ‘home and contents’ insurance, buildings and contents insurance, or home and building insurance.

How can I make my home insurance cheaper?

There are a number of ways to make your home insurance cheaper:

Compare prices: By shopping around, you can find the best deals and work out which is the best home insurance for you. Your decision should be make on the cover you need, not just the lowest monthly premium.

Increase your excess: Home insurance pays out an agreed amount when you make a claim. If you do need to make a home insurance claim you may have to meet a small amount of the cost yourself, known as the excess. The bigger the excess you accept when you are buying home insurance, the lower your premium is likely to be. This is because you are accepting some more of the risk.

Fit good quality locks to windows and doors: By improving your security and making a break-in less likely, you will be seen as a lower risk in the eyes of the insurance company.

Check out combined deals: Sometimes getting home contents and buildings insurance together can work out cheaper.

Try to build up a no-claims bonus: You are likely to be offered a lower premium if you have not made previous claims. If you have a larger excess, it is also probably not worth making a lot of smaller claims on your home insurance policy.

Buildings and contents insurance, what's the difference?

Contents insurance

Contents insurance covers everything that would move with you if you moved house or flat. For example, your sofa and TV, kitchen appliances and personal belongings.

You may not think you have a lot of belongings until you start to add up the cost of replacing each item as new. That is why contents insurance can be valuable to everyone, including renters and council tenants.

How do I find the best contents insurance deals?

You’ll need to compare contents insurance quotes to get the best home contents insurance deal. Make sure you check exactly what the content insurance covers. It may specifically exclude those expensive, portable electronics you regularly take out of the home, like a new mobile phone or laptop. This is because they are very attractive items for thieves due to their small size and high value, and because they are regularly taken away from the home where they can easily be damaged, lost or stolen.

You can find gadget insurance for these items instead, if they are not covered by your home and contents insurance.

Gadget insurance can be bought separately from home contents insurance and is useful for items such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, games consoles and wearable tech. You can compare quotes and find out more about gadget insurance when you Compare Gadget Insurance quotes with Uswitch.

There are several types of home contents cover which cover a variety of insurance risks so make sure you compare home contents insurance deals to get the best one for you. Contents insurance will typically cover you up to £50,000. If you need more cover than this then you will most likely need specialist home insurance for high net worth homes.

Find out more about High Net Worth Insurance and compare quotes with Uswitch.

Building insurance

Building insurance covers the physical structure of your home, like the walls and the roof. Permanent fixtures and fittings, like your bathtub and kitchen cupboards, are also covered by building insurance.

Building insurance is a requirement for most mortgage providers to protect their loan. Many leasehold agreements also stipulate that you have it in place as an owner. You can compare building insurance quotes to get the best building insurance deal for you.

If you do not own your own home and are renting you may not need to buy buildings insurance cover. In many cases renters won't need buildings insurance, as the landlord will have it in place already. That means renters should be careful to check it is not included in a home insurance policy by default if it is not needed, as it will cost you more.

What does home insurance cover?

Different home and contents insurance companies will provide different levels of cover. So the cheapest home and contents insurance may not be the best cover for you.

Typically, buildings and contents insurance will cover the cost of repair if your house is damaged by:

Home insurance guides

How much does home insurance cost?

House insurance consists of home (buildings) and contents insurance, which will vary in cost. You’ll need to shop around using home and contents insurance comparison sites to get the best deals for you. The Uswitch tool above can help.

Cheap home and contents insurance policies may not be the best deal in the long run. Add-ons can make your home and contents insurance quote more expensive. But they may be useful when you come to claim on your policy as you can cover items basic policies may not cover.

Read more about how you can calculate costs for home insurance.

Some of these add-ons are:

How do I find cheap home insurance?

Buying home and contents insurance together will usually get you the cheapest deal as you can receive a discount for buying both policies with the same issuer at the same time.

The Uswitch home insurance comparison tool can help to get cheap home insurance deals.

Savvy consumers can lower the cost of home insurance by:

How do I apply for house insurance?

To apply for house or home insurance, an insurance company will need your personal details, including:

A home insurance company will also ask:

A house insurance provider may want to know:

When you compare home insurance quotes before applying it will be useful to you to know:

How much your home contents are worth: Write out a list of all your belongings and how much it would cost to replace them. Be realistic and honest. You may wish to photograph some of the more important items so you have evidence of ownership.

How much cover you want: Do you want enough home insurance cover to pay for the cost of replacing all of your personal belongings? Or are you happy to pay a smaller premium and accept a smaller payout if you make a claim?

Find out more about Working from Home insurance

See also: