Negotiating the difficulties of getting underpinned insurance

Subsidence and general land deterioration is a massive problem for homeowners – even if it hasn't affected your home for decades, you'll always have the worry that it could return in the future, and this can be a real issue when it comes to trying to secure home insurance.

This can be incredibly frustrating – no matter how certain you might be that the problem won't come back, insurance companies are by their very nature cautious businesses who don't want to sign up to anything that might cost them a significant amount of money in the future. If a regular company won't agree to take you on as a client, then you'll have to seek out companies who offer a specialist kind of insurance.

Underpinned insurance is the kind of insurance you need to be looking at if you own a property that has been or could be affected by subsidence. Underpinning is the measure that will have been taken in order to stabilise the house on the ground, but even this might not be enough to reassure insurers. While they will be more likely to insure your home if they know that things have been done to try and make it a safer place to live, you may be asked a number of questions (such as the cause of the subsidence, any prior problems, the measures taken to resolve them and so on) before any quote is offered. You'll probably have to provide documentation to back up what you're saying, such as structural engineers' reports, a home buyers' report or a certificate of structural adequacy. We've already seen how cautious insurance companies, it's unlikely that they're just going to take your word for it!