The media have widely reported last weekend (25th August) on the “most desirable” places to live in England Scotland and Wales. These postcodes were assessed by house prices against earnings, longevity and various other factors. Even with a power station locally, one area did hit the top ten. Further press releases highlighting the most expensive towns to live were also released with towns in Surrey taking 5 spots alone with an average house price between them of 836,000 with Virginia Water taking top spot with an average of £1,186,000.

For those residents who live in “safe” or “quiet” affluent areas there is a common perception that their buildings and contents insurance polices should therefore be proportionately less. But is this true? Well, yes and no. Certainly with those who have a lot more to lose, policyholders attention to risk management increases with increased security and regular maintenance awareness. Those with large assets tend not to claim for smaller issues. So on balance these insurance risks are perceived to be better and the premiums lower pro-rata. Buildings insurance, however, is not necessarily wealth driven. Yes, again, where there are large sums insured, size discounts do apply but there is a ceiling. Many other factors influence building insurance premiums – subsidence heave and landslip being being the core issue of concern to insurers, followed by the age of the building. There some areas that are deemed to be less desirable would still pay much less of a premium proportionately purely because of these factors alone. Of course there are many influencing factors including whether properties are regularly unoccupied, the construction and previous claims history. For cheap empty property insurance or cheap buildings insurance with claims specialist providers will tailor products to suit budgets and cover.