Valuing House Contents - Shortcuts??

[IsleofWightPete]

I know the correct way to work out an insurance valuation for house contents is to go room to room, listing every single item, no matter how small, and putting an estimate of a replacement value on each one (using Argos catalogues, furniture brochures, Curry's price lists etc etc), before adding the whole lot up for the house. And virtually all insurer websites tell you to do this.

Ain't going to happen!

There have got to be THOUSANDS of items in our house - in fact probably more than a thousand in some individual rooms. I really don't have the time (or inclination) to itemise and evaluate everything, beyond a short list of major, high value items (such as wife's jewellery, and a few valuable pieces of furniture and so on that are over £1500).

Surely there are some rule-of-thumb calculations that can be employed to give a workable approximation of normal household furnishings and paraphernalia?

The only thing I can find on the web is that an average house has between £45 and £55k of contents at replacement value.
I was hoping for something a little more granular then that, but stopping well short of an item by item inventory! (I don't mind taking a few photos of each room to detail major items)

Any thoughts?

[dionaeamuscipula]

Consolidate items.

ie if you have 60 T-shirts then replacement value = 60*£15 = £900. Unless your T-shirt collection is made up of valuable rarities specially made for Marilyn Monroe of course. 100 Silvanian Families figurine sets , £15 each (get a reasonable price off amazon) = £1,500. etc.

We *don't* have thousands of items per room but were quite shocked at the values we came up with, especially on clothes, books, DVDs (600 at a replacement cost of about £15 each = £9grand), CDs (see DVDs)*, it all adds up despite not having any really expensive items. We easily crashed over the top of the supposed average.

There really isn't a shortcut to crashing round (don't forget the loft, the garage, and the airing cupboard which might well have £500 RV of towels), but you only have to do it once.

DM

*and of course our tens of thousands of pounds worth of Sylvanian Family figurines

[newlyretired]

You could use an insurer that doesn't require an itemised contents valuation:

http://www.johnlewis-insurance.com/

newlyretired

[bungeejumper]

Our ins co covers our house and contents, and it didn't want anything more than a list of valuable jewellery (a very short list), any furniture or artworks worth more than £1,000 (1 table, 1 painting, some Georgian silver, my guitar), and a guesstimate for our computer gear. Beyond that, well, frankly we guessed, and we were quickly bumping up against the £60K maximum that our policy would cover. So we settled for that.

A lot of it would seem ridiculous to value at replacement cost, but we had to guess anyway. Ye gods, my CD collection would probably open the bidding at £3-4K, even though half of it is bargain-box crud with negligible value to me, or anybody else for that matter.

But the computer gear was a real problem. Being a bit of a tech hoarder, I've probably got £10K's worth of outmoded, long-since-written-off stuff that it would be ludicrous to value at replacement value, because you can't buy it any more, and nor would you really want to. I have two early desktop computers (think 1985) which are probably going to be collectable one day - worth maybe £250 each on Ebay at present - and an all-in-one Apple iMac from 2000 that was by far the most unreliable bit of tech I've ever owned, but which I've kept because I like the product design. Probably worth £50 even if it works, which it might not.

I feel your pain. Valuing this sort of stuff is a nightmare, and a bit of a farce really. Still, at least I don't have an expensive wardrobe. There are some upsides to having only three pairs of shoes, one suit and four decent sweaters to my name.

BJ

[88V8]

Are you sure you are going to get New for Old?
Some policies work that way, but just asking.

Otherwise you'll get market value which for most household items is peanuts.

V8

[melonfool]

You could use an insurer that doesn't require an itemised contents valuation:

http://www.johnlewis-insurance.com/

newlyretired

I've never seen one that 'required' it, I think IoWP is asking for his own benefit so he insures for the right value.

Personally, I just guess.

I think we have less, and less valuable stuff, than most people, so I put it at the lower end. We certainly don't have 600 DVDs, for example. We might have 60. I wouldn't care about replacing them anyway.

Mel

[swill453]

We certainly don't have 600 DVDs, for example. We might have 60. I wouldn't care about replacing them anyway.

The problem is that you still have to insure them for the new replacement value, otherwise you're underinsured.

So an insurance assessor could have a look around when you claim for, say, a carpet, and decide you're only 75% insured so only pay 75% of the value of the claim.

Likewise that (hypothetical) bookcase full of trashy paperbacks that you really don't care about, well they'll be about 8 quid each towards your contents valuation.

Scott.

[k333]

We certainly don't have 600 DVDs, for example. We might have 60. I wouldn't care about replacing them anyway.

The problem is that you still have to insure them for the new replacement value, otherwise you're underinsured.

So an insurance assessor could have a look around when you claim for, say, a carpet, and decide you're only 75% insured so only pay 75% of the value of the claim.

Likewise that (hypothetical) bookcase full of trashy paperbacks that you really don't care about, well they'll be about 8 quid each towards your contents valuation.

Scott.

So has anyone gone through the process of having an insurance assessor round and valuing the house contents? I would imagine it would have to be quite a seriously large claim to have this situation, and presumably quite rare.

- K

[swill453]

So has anyone gone through the process of having an insurance assessor round and valuing the house contents? I would imagine it would have to be quite a seriously large claim to have this situation, and presumably quite rare.

I would think they might only do that if they had grounds for suspicion e.g. if they were on your premises, knew that your own valuation was fairly low, and could see stacks of books/CDs/DVDs or whatever that would contradict this.

Scott.

[jackdaww]

I have never taken any house contents insurance - on the basis we probably wont get burgled ( we havnt as yet ) , and if the house burns down compensation for the value would be the least of my worries .

I dont know how much we have saved on premiums over 50 years, possibly more than our contents have ever been worth.

.

[genou]

I have never taken any house contents insurance - on the basis we probably wont get burgled ( we havnt as yet ) , and if the house burns down compensation for the value would be the least of my worries .

I dont know how much we have saved on premiums over 50 years, possibly more than our contents have ever been worth.

.

You live lean and mean. Buildings and contents for me this year are £185 ( 1m rebuild, 75k contents ). Over 50 years, excel reckons at a real rate of return of 2% that 185 would be 16K. Even at 5% it is only 40K. But that's buildings as well.

[LadyGagarin]

Surely an insurer would be more concerned that you might be over- rather than under- valued and hence likely to claim for replacing goods you had never owned in the first place.

[IsleofWightPete]

I dont know how much we have saved on premiums over 50 years, possibly more than our contents have ever been worth.

I doubt it.
Insurance premiums for contents are typically in the 0.2 - 0.4% range, depending on where you live, the type of dwelling etc.
After 50 years you have probably saved no more than 10 - 20% of their value.
And obviously far less than that if you ever had a claimable event that would have offset some of the outlay.
(Not to mention the add on's like public liability cover)

However, the decision to insure or not is an individual one.
Someone close to me lost EVERYTHING in a house fire. They literally had what they stood up in. And they were not insured. For them it was a life altering event. Maybe its different for you, and that is obviously down to your personal circumstances.

Although I could probably cope financially with a total loss, I would prefer not to have to, should the worst ever happen. And for a few hundreds a year, to me it represents very cheap peace of mind.

[jackdaww]

I dont know how much we have saved on premiums over 50 years, possibly more than our contents have ever been worth.

I doubt it.....

===============================

yes i agree - ive maybe saved around £5k .

our contents are mainly 2nd hand pre war and now quite valuable.

maybe i should do contents from now on , having beaten the odds so far .

i will stress i have always taken buildings cover , including 3rd party liability , the risk is small but a wipeout is not .

my car insurance is comprehensive , but with maximum voluntary excess , so its effectively third party , but third party is perversely more expensive!

the other ESSENTIAL insurance for me is car breakdown and rescue.
.

[dionaeamuscipula]

So has anyone gone through the process of having an insurance assessor round and valuing the house contents? I would imagine it would have to be quite a seriously large claim to have this situation, and presumably quite rare.

- K

Domestically, yes, I have. The ultimate claim was for about £20k. The damage was obvious, we had a good level of cover, and a list of how we had come to our cover level. The assessor was really helpful and indeed discussed whether or not there were aspects of our claim that needed to be revised upwards (there were, it turned out).

Someone else asked the question about under- versus over-valuation. Not surprisingly, the insurance company has concerns about both. If you are under-covered then they are losing income, and their risk profile will be wrong. If you have £30,000 of cover, half your house is destroyed but your claim is for the full £30,000, then your insurers may well limit your claim to £15,000 on the grounds that they are paying for the loss of half the amount covered.

They're not going to worry if you have underestimated by a few thousand in several tens of thousands.

I'd hazard that under-valuation is much more prevalent than over-valuing, since over-valuing would be playing a pretty long game as frauds go. Unless you are planning to set fire to your house.

DM