Building insurance recommendations

We have been with Comminsure for PPOR and all IPs mainly because we borrowed a lot from CBA in the past and our relationship manager would organize it with CBA.

However, we made just one claim in 10 years of paying premiums and Comminsure tried every trick in the book to not to have to pay for repairs and in the end they paid half of what it cost to repair the storm damage.

However we stayed with them just to avoid the hassle of changing insurances but I am ready to pull the trigger now and want to move to a more reliable and possible better value insurer.

Current insurances:
Multiple building insurances - CBA
Landlord insurances - EBM
Cars - Suncorp, NRMA

Look forward to recommendations!

 

I use EBM for most of my properties as they offer both landlord and building insurance combined. I have made one claim with them and it was quite easy to resolve. Unfortunately, they don't offer multiple property discounts and they have recently limited the purchase of new policies (depending on location, etc.)

I have also used property insurance plus (PIP) recently who had a much cheaper premium (about $250 cheaper). Although, I have yet to make a claim with them so cannot comment on how dealing with them would be.

I would recommend either company based upon my experience so far, I hope this helps.

 

Thanks - I wasn’t aware EBM also offer building insurance. I will explore this further.

 

All the specialist landlords insurers also offer building insurance. It's generally competitive and a lot of people take them out together, but there doesn't seem to be any issues with taking them out separately either. We use a combination of PI-Plus (cheap!), EBM and Terri Scheer.

 

I personally think it’s best to have one property with the same insurer for building and landlord. So much easier to have one point of contact, especially for grey areas like escape of liquid and resultant damage.

Came across someone recently who was flooded and had PPOR building insurance with one insurer and contents with another! So the replacement of his timber floors was covered by building insurance, as was temp accom during construction. But he had to go to his contents insurer for storage of his furniture (and pay another excess).