Undoubtedly, your home is your most valuable asset, you will want to protect is against the main perils such as, Fire, Flood, Storm, Burglary and the lesser perils such as your enthusiastic toddler knocking over your new flat screen TV.

So how much should you ensure your house for? People often make the mistake of insuring their house for the market value (what their neighbour sold their house for) but your property should be insured for the cost of re-building, including site clearance, solicitors & architects fees.

With regards to calculating how much your contents should be insured for we recommend the highly scientific method of going into every room in the house and doing a quick tot of how much everything in it cost!

If you are a landlord and have your property let we can arrange cover for your building and your liability, likewise if you are a tenant and require cover for your contents, no problem we can arrange this also.

A quick call to our office and one of our Household Advisers will help you determine suitable amounts of cover and can arrange cover there and then if required.

Standard Cover If your home is totally destroyed you will be covered up to the amount that your home is insured for. We will replace your contents on a new for old basis (apart from household linen, clothing, sports equipment and bicycles where we will take off an amount of wear and tear) up to the amount you have chosen.

Standard cover with accidental damage to contents This would cover incidents such as glassware damage following the collapse of a shelf, paint spilled on the carpet or dropping red wine on to carpets or furniture.

Standard cover with accidental damage to contents and All Risks All Risks cover offers you extra protection against accidental loss or damage for those personal possessions which you would normally take outside your home.

Flexible cover Flexible cover offers you a choice of comprehensive insurance cover. You can choose from:

• Contents Only (suitable for apartment owners)
• Buildings Only (suitable for holiday home or investment property owners only)
• Buildings and Contents (suitable for holiday home owner or investment property owners only)

Buildings Cover
Insure your house for the amount you choose (based on the amount it would cost you to rebuild).

You’ll need Buildings Cover if you are a homeowner or an investor.

Contents Cover
You choose which percentage of your property insurance you want to cover your contents: cover up to 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45% or 50% of your property insurance. This means that the insured value of your contents is worth a certain percentage of the insured value of your home.

You can choose Contents Cover if you’re a homeowner or if you are renting.

High Value Items
You may want to insure specific items as high value items. This means that the insured value of your more expensive belongings is worth up to 50% of the insured value of your contents as a whole. Plus you can insure one high value item for up to 10% of you contents as a whole.

For example
You might decide to insure you home for €150,000. This is your Buildings Cover.

If you decide that your contents are worth 50% of your home’s insured value, your contents are covered for €75,000 (Contents Cover = 50% of your Buildings Cover).

If you decide that your valuable items (jewellery, rare books, etc) are worth 20% of your entire contents cover, your high value items are covered for €15,000 (20% of your Contents cover).