Households hammered by record surge in home insurance with prices up 36%

12 December 2023 , 14:40

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Insurance costs have rocketed in recent months (Image: Getty Images/RooM RF)

Households are being hammered by a record surge in the cost of home insurance, research has revealed.

Prices have jumped by an average 36% in the past 12 months alone, according to industry experts Consumer Intelligence. It comes on the back of a record rise in the cost of car insurance.

The average of the five cheapest quotes for a buildings and contents policy now stands at £227 - and damage from Storms Babet and Ciara is likely to mean more increases, Consumer Intelligence warned. The price of buildings and content insurance has gone up even more after households make a claim. Customers claiming for water damage have seen an average 43% jump in their annual quote.

Those making a buildings-related claim have seen prices offered surge nearly 41%. Yet even customers who have not made a claim have seen prices rocket by more than a third. Londoners continue to face the highest quoted premiums for building and contents policies, with the North East the cheapest region.

Laura Vas, senior insight analyst at Consumer Intelligence, said: “With Storms Babet and Ciaran causing significant damage to thousands of homes across Britain, we anticipate further increases in premiums over the coming months. Homeowners with prior claims may see additional increases in coming months following recent storm damage, although insurers could spread the claim costs across all policy holders driving further market inflation.”

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To put the past year’s hike into perspective, Consumer Intelligence says its overall quoted premium has risen by 42.2% since it first started collecting the data almost a decade ago. Under-50s households see slightly higher quotes for their home insurance, the data also shows.

And this age group has seen slightly higher rises in quoted premiums over the past three months, at 9.3%, compared with 8% for the under-50s. Looking at property types, Victorian-era properties built between 1850 1895 attract the highest average quotes. They are typically 21% higher than the next highest for houses, those built between 1910 and 1925.

Graham Hiscott