Mortgage/House insurance query

One_Of_Shanks

Hi, looking for advice please.

Well over a year ago we purchased our home for around 200k.
We took a mortgage of 106k with BOI.
There is 103k outstanding, soon we'll be paying off a lump sum of 35k.

The auctioneer valuing the house put down a rebuild cost of 225k despite my uncle who's a retired builder saying a more accurate rebuild cost would be 180k, we had to initially insure the house for 225k to appease the bank as it was faster than getting another valuer etc... in order to draw down mortgage. (we were in a hurry as we had twins on the way so it was just faster etc)

A month later I rang BOI Home insurance and decreased the cover to 200k to get premium down a bit and also coz it was a more realistic figure, and they said fine.

A year passed and no problem whatsoever.

Then after a year we got a letter from BOI Home insurance doubling our premium for the same amount of 200k cover despite no claims or changes.

So we changed insurer to Chill for the same amount of 200k and all was fine for a few months.

But now the bank are saying the home is under insured and want it changed to 225k.

That's more than house is worth, more than it would cost to rebuild, more than double the amount we owe (soon to be 300% of what we owe) and most annoyingly of all it didn't bother then that it was insured for 200k for the past 11 months when the insurance was with them.

My question is for the sake of the bank's paper work all matching up, are they realistically likely to take any action over the 25k discrepancy?

Thanks in advance.

Zzippy

Check the Chartered Surveyors calculator at www.scsi.ie - they give estimated rebuild costs for the size, type and location of houses. Add a buffer to that and you are well insured. If the bank are still sticky you mnight have to get an estimate from a chartered surveyor, but in the long run it might be money well spent.