Unlike car insurance, there is no legal requirement for anyone to have home insurance. But before you just forget about it altogether, consider how you would feel if you had some of your possessions destroyed or stolen and you had no insurance cover - would you be able to replace them? Furthermore, what if there was damage to a property that you own - could you afford to repair it without insurance cover. Considering the value of houses and their contents, it's certainly advisable to have home insurance cover. You might think of it as an extra bill amongst many others, but there are plenty of ways that you can cut costs of your home insurance quote. Take a read of this article for a few tips.

Improve Your Locks
If you improve your home security, then not only will your home be more difficult to break into, but your home insurance quote could be dramatically cut. This could be to such an extent that over the long term, your saving on your insurance quote will more than cover the cost of fitting secure locks. When installing these, check that they are likely to make a difference to the price of your quote. Co Op home insurance, for instance, has a handy list of security improvements that will help to lower costs, particularly with the types of locks you'll need to have installed.

Install a Burglar Alarm
This is one of the easiest ways to significantly reduce your home insurance quote. Although quite expensive to initially install, NACOSS approved alarms can reduce your annual quote by 7.5%. If you're intending to get a burglar alarm, try to bear in mind how much it will offset your insurance quote, it will normally be worth it over a period of just a few years.

Increase Your Excess
It's fairly standard to pay a £50 excess, but policies normally have the option for you to have a higher excess. It's often a good option to have a larger excess if you're getting cover for your building rather than your contents. Things like structural damage are quite rare, but it might well pay to have cover for a substantial amount, even if you have to pay a significant excess.

Don't Pay too Much!
When stating what you need for your buildings insurance, don't try and cover your house's market value. Instead, insure your house for its 'rebuild' value - that is the bricks and mortar value of the property if it had to be knocked down. The location of the property should considered as less important than building materials, labour and architects' fees. Cutting the location value will mean the amount of cover is substantially lessened along with your quote.


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The Co-operative buildings insurance covers the entire structure of your home, including roofs, walls, fences, gates and outbuildings.