Buying a house: what insurance might you need?

Buying a house can be an exciting time.

But as you’re settling in, finding the right place for your special pieces of furniture and exploring your new neighbourhood, have you thought about whether you have an appropriate amount of personal insurance cover?

While you must have house insurance on the security to take out a mortgage, there is more flexibility about your personal insurances. So, here’s how personal insurance cover can provide invaluable peace of mind for new (and existing) homeowners.

Income protection

This is a big one. If you were not able to work for a period of time, would you be able to cover your mortgage repayments? If you answered ‘no’, it means that your household relies on your income and protecting it is probably worth considering.

ACC would pay 80% of your income if you were injured, but there’s no such cover for sickness. On the other hand, with income protection, you can get a replacement income if you’re not able to work due to a serious illness or injury.

You can choose how long you’d like to have any payout continue, and the amount of “standdown” period before you begin to claim. And, tweaks to both of these can help income protection fit into your budget.

Mortgage and rent cover

Another option to ensure that the home loan repayments are paid should you be seriously ill or injured is a mortgage and rent cover policy.

These are designed to cover your loan repayments, and also are often not offset against ACC, so you could potentially receive a payment if you were off work with an injury, too. Like to know more? Get in touch: we can talk you through the sort of policies that would work for you, and how they can fit together.

Life insurance

If you’ve bought a house with someone else, have you thought about how they would cope if you were no longer around?

Knowing that your spouse and family are taken care of can provide significant peace-of-mind. You can choose to take out life insurance to cover your outstanding mortgage in full, and maybe other living or future expenses, depending on your goals. Not quite sure how much you may need? Once again, don’t hesitate to contact us: we can help you work out what might be an appropriate sum.

Trauma

Trauma insurance pays out a lump sum when you suffer one of the specified covered conditions in your policy (which usually include things like cancer, strokes and heart attacks). Importantly, you can use the lump sum as you like.

This can be really helpful if you need to alter your home to adjust to a disability, for example, or if you just want to make sure you have some cash in the bank to take away any stress about meeting your regular bills, should your health change.