Many homebuyers are confused about coach house insurance, as frankly are some insurers themselves. The big question of is coach house insurance expensive can be difficult to answer.
Coach house insurance should be the same rating as more general home insurance, although there may be one or two more qualifications, and it’s worth understanding your neighbours cover as well, as discussed below.
Many big-brand insurers do not have time to add in even small changes, and so you may find that they charge more, or won’t even cover coach houses at all.
Firstly, what do we mean by ‘coach house’. A coach house is usually a property with a number of garages on the ground floor, where one or. more of those garages are leased to neighbouring properties on a long lease. In short, it is a bit like having a flat with someone below, except as this is a house you need to have buildings and contents cover.
Many people think of coach houses as old buildings but this is not necessarily the case. As a specialist provider of coach house insurance, Emerald has the majority of queries for new-build coach houses. Developers and buyers alike enjoy the quirkiness of a coach house layout!
As we mentioned above, despite the similarities between coach house insurance and general house insurance there are one or two important differences. Insurers will not cover the contents of the garages that have been leased, and neither will they cover the actions of those garage-owners.
That means that you should always check, not just that the owners of those garages have insurance, but that their insurance expressly cover a garage that is not on their property (as it’s on yours!). Many standard policies do not cover buildings that are not within the main house plot. And those other homeowners may thank you as, without that cover, they may be personally liable for any damage they cause to you.
With modern coach houses, there are still plenty of other protections as well – if your coach house is less than ten years old then it will have protection from the National House Building Council’s ten year guarantee. You can find out more about that here.
Also, make sure that you get a good survey and it may be worth asking to see in the other garages just to be on the safe side. You should also make sure that there is suitable security on all three garages – that’s simply a matter of good practice for all the garage owners.
Emerald understands that every home is different. While we count ourselves as specialists in coach house insurance, we can also be ready to offer a quote if there are non-standard building materials, or if an older coach house is listed, or if it is used as a second home for you, or let out to others, say on AirBnB. Rather than being a conveyor belt insurer, we have a dedicated team of real people who are not just call-centre agents, but who are trained to answer most of the coverage queries that you may have.
With any insurer, it is always worth checking who is behind them. Emerald’s underwriters are a syndicate that works within the Lloyds of London insurance market, so there are no middlemen, and you have the comfort that they are extremely highly-rated. That means that you can have peace of mind that if you have any queries that we can’t answer immediately, we will get you the answer and the cover that you need asap.
As a specialist insurer, Emerald can offer you coach house insurance because we are experienced in the issues that owners of coach houses face. To ensure that you can speak to a trained agent on coach house issues, we recommend calling us directly on 0330 113 7109 but you can also see our home offering here.
