Home insurance with a flat roof and rent-a-room tenant ?

ZoZoZo

Hi

I'm a first time buyer buying a new build in Dublin and looking for home insurance. I assumed this would be straight forward but after looking at >10 different suppliers I'm not sure there is even a single one which will provide cover. The two sticking points are:
(i) I intend to avail of the rent-a-room scheme, all but one of the suppliers specify at some point that the dwelling will house solely me and my family (some use the more ambiguous term 'household').
(ii) Like many new-builds (eg photo below) the house has a flat roof and many of the suppliers refuse to offer a quote if >x% of the roof is flat (with x being in the range 15 -> 35). Mine will be 100% flat roof.

So my question is, are these things really a problem or are the suppliers just too lazy to update their forms to allow for what are very normal factors these days ?
Rent-a-room has been around for years and most office blocks and blocks of flats have had flat roofs for decades. I presume the technology is well understood, it's not like the developer suddenly decided to see if it was possible to build a roof out of plastecine and cardboard.

FlatRoof.png

4ensic15

Do you have a broker?

Samuel T. Cogley

I *thought* the majority of household policies allowed for RAR. Must check mine.

ZoZoZo

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

I *thought* the majority of household policies allowed for RAR. Must check mine.

Well, that's my point, they don't explicitly say, rent-a-room is prohibited, but if you read the terms they invariably say something like:

'property is occupied SOLELY by you and/or your family'
allianz.ie was the only one where there was a separate category which was
' owner-occupier with up to 6 paying guests'
6 paying guests seems like a very odd and arbitrary number, but at least it covers rent-a-room.

4ensic15

I take it you don't have a broker.

machalla

It's the flat roof. Anything over 33% is a "risk" regardless of how new the roof is and what materials.
PM me for specialist insurance suggestions, I go through something similar every year!

Pretzill

I have over 40% flat roof after extending and I have to go to one insurer only (all the others I checked out wouldn't even entertain it - I didn't expect any problems as the roof is perfectly secure etc) anyway I reckon I'm probably paying the insurance company about 100 more for the priviledge each year.

TSQ

machalla wrote: »

It's the flat roof. Anything over 33% is a "risk" regardless of how new the roof is and what materials.
PM me for specialist insurance suggestions, I go through something similar every year!

Machalla, hope you dont mind me butting in to this conversation, but I would be interested in your suggestions for non-standard insurance as well.

Dolbhad

Why is a flat roof an issue for insurance? If I ever do an extension I wanted a flat roof, never thought it would be an issue for insurance.

machalla

Dolbhad wrote: »

Why is a flat roof an issue for insurance? If I ever do an extension I wanted a flat roof, never thought it would be an issue for insurance.

It's seen as a higher risk for damage from storms as far as I know. More likely to leak as water could accumulate.

Even though most of them aren't flat, they are pitched slightly to allow easier to run off.

Basically it's harder to price the risk so they don't want to do that or update their models to accommodate anything that doesn't fit them.

If you are under a certain size compared to the overall roof you should be ok. 20-30% I think.

LFC Murphy

machalla wrote: »

Even though most of them aren't flat, they are pitched slightly to allow easier to run off.

Is there a defined 'minimum' pitch before you can reclass a flat root as a lean2?