Rental contents insurance
 

Our container arrives in a few weeks and we are looking for some contents insurance while keeping them in our rental property.

Back in the UK we paid about £240 for house + contents insurance and our best quote here has been $900 just for the contents.

That seems a bit steep to me. Can anyone recommend a good value insurance company?

Thanks

Andrew

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

We are insured through AMI. Justed looked back through the old policy documents and we were paying $365 for rental property contents insurance 3 years ago.

Although it is only contents insurance, you will pay more if your house is not built of 'permanent' materials, no alarm and in an area with a high amount of claims for burgulary??

Worth shopping around a bit I suspect.
Have you tried any of these?

http://www.state.co.nz/
http://www.psis.co.nz/InternetBanking/nt/insurance.asp
http://www.kiwibank.co.nz/personal-banking/insurance/

HTH

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

Also, you can often get multi policy discounts ie if you have your car insurance with the same company.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

Are you getting quotes on your own estimate of the value of the items or by way of the insurance company guesstimating according to the size / or number of bedrooms in the house?

I pay $98 per month with The AA, for approx $80k worth of contents and also includes my car on fully comprehensive cover.

It's so difficult to get online comparisons here and you have to shop around by going to each place separately for a quote.

Try the AA, AMI, your own bank may give preferential rates and perhaps State Insurance. They all give discounts for having more than one policy, so it's good to combine with the same company where you can.

I just tried State with my own details, saying I was in rented without an alarm with $80k cover the costs.

Annual Amount $665.33
Fortnightly Instalment $60.75 or Monthly $28.04

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

So true through National Bank I have multi policy with Tower for house contents and two cars - compared to UK it seemed very reasonable. I think car insurance is cheaper here because it's not compulsory.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

It's cheaper because a large element is already covered by ACC and paid with your Road Tax - Rego.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

Wow - $900 seems ridiculously high.

It all depends what you wanna insure your contents for really. We had our contents insured for a paltry $40k (not much I admit but enough to kit out th ehouse if it burnt down) or something and we only paid $35-$40 a month for contents insurance.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

AMI
We have contents, building and 2 cars with them and it is by far the cheapest and I have been told by several friends that they are realy quick to approve claims. One thing to note they were not the cheapest for motorbikes. Swann via Harley Davidson was cheapest and NO you DON"T need to own a harley to get insurance from them, go and ask in any dealership pr give a HArley dealershi a call they can do it all via phone and post.

We have just been shopping aroud as our is up for renewal and AMI are coming out the cheapest by far yet again. In sone instances over half the cost as some of the other well know insurers.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

I don't think that it is too high, though yes shop it around. Keep in mind that contents does not just include your clothing, linen, furniture and personal items. The contents also includes drapes, carpet, basically anything on the interior side of the drywall, except the stove and oven. Those two items are included in the building insurance.

If you have a fire that is your fault, in your rental, you are responsible to pay for the repairs that are not part of the building.

Or, let's say you have some sparks fly out from the log burner, your landlord could try to force you to fix it and you will need to make a claim perhaps if it cannot be invisibly mended. Contents insurance covers that.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

Thanks for all the advice.

We went with AMI in the end and reduced our contents value a little. We have a rough idea of what they are worth as we priced it all up before we put in in the container and needed that insured.

AMI, although expensive compared to UK, was a lot cheaper than many of the quotes. When we told one (major) insurer the value of our contents they told me that they have never provided a quote for a value that high:eek:. We do own a lot of things but we are not rich!!!

I am surprised though that it may be cheaper to replace things here. I had read a lot on here about things being more expensive buy my experience so far has been that most things are cheaper.

Re: Rental contents insurance
 

When we did our insurance for the container, we got my dad to price all our things up. He is very savvy when it comes to things like that and my word we really did under estimate what all our belongign were worth.

Dont under estimate what you have get a relative or close friend to check it.
We used this to insure our contents with AMI and ended up taking 2 policies out to cover it all. We do have a fair few antiques though which are itemised and they have photos of them in their office just incase the worst should happen!