One of the not so pleasant surprises for the people of UK is that home insurance prices get a boost again! Confirmed by the Consumer Intelligence, there is a 3.5% rise in the annual cost of home insurance in the UK. This year-on-year increase brings the average annual home insurance premium to £123. This is especially more surprising as there is a drop in inflation, which reduced from 1% to 0.9%.
This rise in the cost of insurance is blamed on the increase in government taxes even though low premiums were offered due to the ever increasing competition between home insurance providers. Due to the stiff competition between home insurers, the average best buy prices are 9% lower than what they were in February 2014. Knowing that the cost of home insurance has not reached its highest peak may come up as a relief for most home owners.
When statistics were studied regionally, it was found that Eastern England had the highest rise in home insurance prices. Here, the insurance got a 6.6% boost which was closely followed by Wales with a 5.6% increase in the insurance cost. The least affected people were those living in the South East where they have to pay just 1.8% more for insuring their homes.
Without much of a doubt, anyone can anticipate that premiums must be highest in the urban cities like London. This holds true as if you want to buy home insurance in London then the average premium cost would be around £154. Second in line are home owners living in the North West who have to pay £127, which is £27 lesser than that in London. Contrary to this, the region with the lowest premiums is the South West where people have to pay around £113 to insure their homes. This is 36% lower than the highest home insurance premiums in the UK.
When we look at different age groups, it is easy to see that people over-50s are paying the highest premiums with an average of £131. As opposed to this, people who are below 50 years of age need to pay £119. In addition, people over-50s face higher price rises which is around 4.1% when compared to 3% paid by people under-50s. This can be accounted to the fact that people over-50s have bigger and lavish houses when compared to the youth. It can also be due to the fact that people over-50s live in older houses, which demand more maintenance and hence higher premiums.
How about you? Do you feel that your premiums should be lower? Well, then you can easily use home insurance comparison tool to cross-check your payments.
Brijesh is a veteran financial analyst living in the London. He works at FreePriceCompare.com a leading price comparison website in the UK. Normally, he writes on insurance market news and frugal advice for customers. He suggests all UK households to compare home insurance plans online before finalizing the plan.