Victorian semi detached house insurance and view on flood risk and subsidence history

[Southeast123]

Hello all,

Apologies if people have already posted about this! I'd really appreciate some advice.

We are in the process of purchasing a semi detached property in southeast London (pre-survey / pre-exchange stage). The house is from the late 19c. We have been made aware of some structural problems in the past - subsidence in the form of hairline cracks caused by drainage pipework, bowing in the flank wall and a moderate crack found in the back of the party wall. We have been assured these were all addressed and dealt with at the time and that they have the corroborating certificates of structural adequacy (all of this will of course be looked into further with the survey).

In addition to this, we have been made aware by a combo of online gov.uk environmental checks and our conveyancing checks that the property is at high risk of seas/rivers flooding (surface flooding less of a concern). We are less than 100 metres from a river.

I guess I have two questions:
- Are these two concerns - structure and flooding - significant enough alarm bells that we should discount the property?
- We have got some initial quotes for house insurance. One through our mortgage advisor is coming back at £1500 / year, which seems very high? Is it? I have also taken an initial look at comparison sites (confused.com, moneysaving etc) and they come back lower, hovering around the £700-£1200 mark. However, with the online comparison sites we only seem to be getting about 7 quote options that we could actually consider paying (eg. below 1500). Compared to average, is that a very small amount of insurance options? I am basically trying to understand how insurers see the property - is the premium high? If yes, is that because of flooding/structure/something else? Is only having half a dozen or so insurance options on these sites a bad place to be? Is there a high risk, that in years to come, this number will shrink to even fewer insurers wanting to insure? Or is this all quite normal?

Any insights / steer on what I could look into next are much appreciated!

 

[Stevers]

My parents had buildings insurance through LV, but after my father's death it became clear that he had never told them that the house had been underpinned in the 1980s, a condition that meant they wouldn't be able to offer insurance at renewal - which is a bit barmy when you think about it!

Insurers now share data and it's not impossible that the 'vanilla' insurers have been excluding themselves from quoting on your property. Our home insurance (also LV) almost tripled this year and that was confirmed to be a very competitive quote when I shopped around. Although Victorian, our home isn't listed, has no history (or risk) of subsidence or flooding and we have never needed to claim on home insurance for anything.

 

[Cubist]

Many insurers are getting very nervous about flood risks at present and premiums are starting to climb rapidly. This trend is set to continue if the UK climate becomes warmer and wetter as many pundits are predicting. Frankly, with the problems the house already has on top of the threat of not being able to secure flood damage cover at a reasonable price now AND in the future, my Nikes would be firmly laced up right now.