- Instant home insurance quotes

Insuring your home can offer a great deal of reassurance if your house is burgled or flooded.

Take 10 minutes to find out what to look for when insuring your home and possessions.

Before you begin: Make a list
Work out which items you want to insure and against what risks. Do you want to cover items such as cameras both inside and outside the home? Do you have any possessions with a particularly high value? Do you want to be covered for accidental damage, for example if you accidentally crack your washbasin? It's useful to have a list of your requirements before contacting insurance companies.

Step 1: Understand the difference between building and contents insurance
Home insurance comes in two parts:
- Buildings insurance protects you against damage to the bricks and mortar and permanent fixtures and fittings. It also usually covers outbuildings like your garage, greenhouse or garden shed. If you're a leaseholder, you don't usually need to have this cover. The freeholder does.
- Contents insurance protects you against damage to or loss of anything you'd normally take with you if you moved furniture, kitchen equipment, television, computer and audio equipment, clothing and valuables.

Both types of home insurance cover against a range of perils including fire, subsidence, theft, flood and storm. They also provide important cover for your legal liabilities as a homeowner.

Step 2: Get the level of cover right
Make sure you buy the right amount of cover, or any claim you come to make could be rejected or reduced.

With buildings insurance you need to insure for the cost of rebuilding the property, which is likely to be less than its market value. You might find the rebuild figure on your mortgage survey or you can have it assessed by a surveyor.

With contents insurance, there are two main ways to get cover. It's a good idea to get quotes for both types:
- A bedroom-rated policy is based on the number of bedrooms your home has (often subject to a maximum amount of cover)
- A sum-insured policy is where you work out how much cover you need, from which the insurer calculates your premium (regular policy payment)

Step 3: Compare new-for-old and indemnity policies
The better contents policies replace damaged or stolen goods on a new-for-old basis, which means you'll either be paid the full cost of repairing damaged items or the cost of replacing them with equivalent new articles if they are stolen or destroyed.

Indemnity policies are cheaper but they deduct an amount for wear, tear and depreciation. Clothing and household linen can only be covered on an indemnity basis. A man's suit, for example, is only reckoned to have a life span of five years.

Step 4: Add on extra cover
You can pay an additional premium to extend your insurance to cover a range of things:
- Personal possessions (also called 'all risks') covers loss of items when they're out of the home, for example your handbag or camera
- Accidental damage. Standard contents policies include some cover for accidental damage, for example glass in furniture, but not accidental damage to goods or furnishings:
- Food in your freezer
- Bicycles
- Personal money and credit cards
- Legal expenses. To cover the cost of legal proceedings you need to bring or to defend a claim, typically in personal injury, consumer or property disputes

Step 5: Cover high-value items
It you have particularly valuable items, always check that these would be covered; if not, you may have to pay an additional premium. Some policies specify a certain value as 'high value', which may go as low as £1,000. You should keep proofs of purchase; you may be asked to get a valuation certificate for expensive items like paintings, antiques and jewellery.

Step 6: Get a discount
You may be able to save money if you buy your buildings and contents insurance from the same company. Some insurers also offer no-claims discounts on contents insurance. Other things that may help you get a discount:
- Fitting an approved burglar alarm
- Secure locks
- Membership of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme
- Increasing the excess - an amount you would pay for any claim

Step 7: Consider a DIY approach
As an alternative to taking out insurance cover you could put money aside - in a savings account that pays interest - in case the worst happens.

For example, the average house contents claim is just over £1,000 and the average annual premium £160, so if you saved £160 each year and didn't make a claim in seven years, you would be better off than having paid the insurance. It's all a matter of risk.