Is your address increasing your insurance premiums?

How much money do you think you could save on your home insurance, based on nothing but your postcode? The answer, it seems, is quite a lot – around £180 in fact – with those in areas of Bournemouth getting the best prices in the country on average.

The southern holiday resort has two of the cheapest postcode districts in the country according to recent research, the average premium coming in at around £120, which is a saving of 176% compared to Harrow’s HA7 (the UK’s most expensive postcode), where on average, you can expect to spend around £300 on your buildings and contents insurance.

In fact, the ten most expensive places to cover a house all lie between the north end of the M25 and the Thames, North London being the most costly place to insure in the UK. This is no surprise however – when you consider the expense of buying in London coupled with its generally mixed crime rates, it should be fairly obvious why it’s so expensive.

What’s quite interesting though is that while North London is most definitely the most expensive area, the top ten cheapest postcodes are scattered all over the British Isles. Bournemouth is first, followed up by York, Glasgow, Tidworth, Nottingham, Leicester and Northern Ireland. Cardiff even sneaks in at number ten, meaning that cheaper premiums really are all over the place.

The overall average home insurance premium is £164.26, but as previously mentioned, depending on where you live, it can vary a huge deal – up to nearly double that. So, what can you do in order to keep your home insurance premiums down? Well, here are a few things to consider:

Overall, the average home insurance premium is £164.26, but as shown above, depending on where you live it can vary hugely. In fact, in the most expensive areas you might even pay almost double that. Whatever you pay, however, there are things you can do to keep those premiums low, some of which are listed below:

• Fit five lever mortice locks and consider changing the locks – if your house has previous owners, you don’t know who might have a key.
• Fit smoke alarms and give up smoking – both of these things can decrease your premiums by a noticeable amount.
• Join a neighbourhood watch scheme – this can reduce your premiums by up to 5%
• Install security lighting and a NACOSS approved alarm – these will also help to slash the cost of your insurance.
• Don’t claim – companies offer no-claims discount in a similar way to car insurance now, avoid making a claim for a few years and you’ll likely see the price drop.

photo credit: Mukumbura