Is your home adequately insured?
Before trying to help you check that you are adequately insured, I want to stress again that I do not claim to be an expert on insurance, and that every company has different policy wordings. I am attempting to give only some broad outlines.
First, your house should be insured for the amount that it would cost to rebuild, should you have a total loss – for example, if it is burnt to the ground. This will be a different amount to what you think you might be able to sell the house for, or what the council thinks it is worth in terms of your valuation.
Ultimately, if you check your policy wording, you will often find that you are the person responsible for checking that your sum insured is correct. Your brokers and bank, in the case of a bonded property, will help but ultimately the responsibility falls on your shoulders.
All immovable objects or any item that is built in should be included in your sum insured. Your actual house is just a part of the total, so let’s start externally and move inwards.
Your residence starts at the boundary of your property and, therefore, all your boundary walls should be insured.
Obviously, your front boundary on to the road belongs to you. But what about the other boundaries that you might share with neighbours? Who initially built the wall? Is it exactly on the boundary? Is it just inside your boundary or just inside the neighbours’? These are all things that may be taken into account by your insurers, if you have a claim and your sum insured is checked.
You may think that this is being picky, but stop and think for a minute. An 800m2 property may have 120m of walling. Let’s take the most expensive example: a 220mm-thick wall, built out of clay bricks, plastered and painted, may come in at a minimum of R1 200/m or R144 000 in total, a large influence on your sum insured.
Common walls exactly on the boundary could be split 50/50 with the neighbour, but in terms of what the premium would cost, my advice is to assume that all your boundary walls belong to you. In this way, you will ensure that you are well covered.
Retaining walls pose a new set of problems. Is it your boundary or is it supporting your neighbour’s property, if his plot is higher than yours? - Weekend Argus