Large numbers of under insured homeowners risk ‘financial burden’ – survey

It's imperative to ensure your home is not under-insured

Fearghal O'Connor

Almost half of Irish homeowners are “not confident” their home would be fully insured if they were to make a claim today and are risking the prospect of a financial burden should an incident occur, it has been claimed.

A new survey has revealed that, over the last year, only a quarter of people had reviewed the cost it would take to rebuild their home over last year.

The findings of the survey, conducted by Qualtrics Research on behalf of Zurich Insurance with a nationally representative online panel of over 1,000 homeowners, comes at a time when the rebuilding costs of a residential property have risen sharply.

A recent report from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) revealed that house rebuilding costs have increased by an average of 12pc nationally over the last 12 months on top of an average 21pc increase in 2022.

With a continued shortage of labour and high demand for builders, the overall cumulative impact in rebuild costs is 35.5pc over two years.

Although the number of homeowners not confident that their home is adequately insured fell from a high of 66pc two years ago, it found that almost 40pc of homeowners still had either not checked the cost of rebuilding their home in over three years, cannot remember check­ing it, or have never checked it.

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