Is Your Commercial Property ‘Underinsured’?
Did you know that fewer than 1 in 10 commercial properties are insured for the right amount?
When it comes to calculating your sums insured for the purpose of your home and contents insurance policy, you need to calculate a realistic estimate as to how much it would cost to replace or rebuild everything from the ground up.
Due to a strain on supply chains, the costs of goods and materials are in short supply and labour is much harder to source post-Brexit. This has pushed the cost up of construction significantly, which means that the amount to rebuild your commercial property may now be much higher than you think. Since September 2021 alone, the cost of building a 3-bedroom semi-detached house has soared by 14%.
How does underinsurance affect you?
For landlords, property owners and investors, insurance offers a crucial safety net, protecting property assets against unforeseen events. The purpose of this is to cover the cost of repairs or rebuilding work after an insured event like fire or flood. If there is a gap between how much your property is insured for and how much it will realistically cost to rebuild it, this could have a significant financial impact should you need to make a claim.
Remember that the rebuild should not be based on the current market value of the property, it must be based on the full rebuilding cost of that property should it be completely destroyed in a fire for example. The rebuild value should therefor also include costs for debris removal, architect and other related fees.
If you’ve underinsured by half, then any partial claims you want to make on your property or contents policy will be half as well, meaning you’ll have to make up the shortfall yourself, otherwise known as the ‘Average Clause’.
It’s worth getting your calculations right from the outset, so this doesn’t happen.
Avoiding underinsurance as a commercial property owner
We’ll work with you to accurately determine the true cost of rebuilding your property. Together with ‘RebuildCostAssessment’, we offer our clients an industry trusted desktop valuation led by a Chartered Surveyor (RICS) led team of professional assessors for a fraction of the cost to have a full ‘face to face’ survey, although we can also arrange that through ‘RebuildCostAssessment’. The desktop assessment is fast and accurate, giving you a full report offering advice on the cost to rebuild your property from scratch.
To find out more, just give us a call on 01288 353 or email us [email protected].
