Owning your own home

You can mitigate this by verifying the numbers yourself.

You can mitigate this by verifying the numbers yourself.

this

thanks all - appreciate the input. with mortgage rates likely to continue fluctuating, the advisors can also handle that. brother in law is going direct with santander atm (as he is porting) and it seems a nightmare...

I've used a broker the past few times I've renewed - a recommendation from on here a while back who I'd happily recommend forward if anyone wants it.

I'd never go back to a bank - I've got the brokers email address and mobile number, no call centres, they can turn quotes around in minutes.

I've never had to pay a penny as they are paid by the mortgage suppliers commission.

Ours was commish only.

Not for a moment suggesting anything fraudy, but a broker will also helpfully flag possible issues unfront to allow you to make different choices.

Brokers will not try to sell you longer deals, even if they are obviously better for you - worth keeping your eyes open to what benefits you might not benefit them.

Not my experience (unless you are talking longer than 5 years).

My M&S home insurance renewal quote has gone up by 30% - anyone else seeing that? From a scan of the various portals it looks to be at least £500 than a comparable policy...

My M&S home insurance quote did that a few years ago. Switched to Lloyds Bank (who we have our joint account with so we get a bit of a discount from that). Most recent renewal (starts 18th July 2024) has gone up from £204 to £220.61.

:/

Mine went from £1k to 1.4...

Spotted a good comic about this the other day.

Boiled down to:

Me: exists for ten minutes
Life: that will be £120 pls

Jfc that's a lot. Have you tried Getsafe?

Are these any good? They're owned by something called 'Urbanjungle' now...

Huh, good point - I hadn't noticed that

Is that including buildings insurance? That seems to have shot up everywhere in the past year.

buildings and contents
I actually removed bikes from the insurance as I have that under a separate insurance with Laka these days

Yeah, maybe I'm doing something wrong :/ but not that I can tell

My buildings went from ~ £400 to ~£750 and shopping around didn't find anywhere noticeably cheaper. Contents part of the quote stayed around the same.

Yep a couple months ago, I failed to do anything about it.

Cost of building work / materials going up driving it?

That was one of the reasons. Lots more claims due to extreme weather was another.

Just checked my auto-renewal with Swinton.
Last year was £152.28

This year £639.95.
I think they can get fucked.

Nice big claim on our car insurance this year after dearest wife had an oopsie with out wall, dreading renewal time.

Sainsbury's wanted to go from 328 to 900. Eventually got it as low as 500. I wonder if closing European financial access has affected prices?

There's also an effect of the new legislation that prevents them increasing the prices more for renewals than they'd quote for new customers. Since that area of free money has gone they've had to raise prices generally to ensure they make the same rapacious profits.