In order to obtain a mortgage you must have suitable building insurance in place. The general insurance market will not take on a property that has been underpinned, shows signs of cracking or is even in a high risk area. If you are lucky enough to have insurance cover in place over the years your insurer may increase the premium more than they would on a normal house so when you sell the buyer will have to use your insurer.

Selling a property within subsidence risk area

If you get your insurers to transfer the cover to a new owner WHICH OFTEN THEY WONT. Potential buyers still might have trouble with a lender unhappy to lend on a property that has insurance restrictions imposed.  Many lender will not accept a subsidence insurance excess over £1000 while insurers sell policies with excesses over £1000 making affected properties worthless. To sell you may be forced to use a cash buyer who may only offer 50- 75% of the market value of the house at best.

Insurers will often do their best not to transfer over the cover such as gentleman who inherited his parent’s underpinned house they refused to cover him as he was 3 months younger than the magic 50 years old client base they cover

Sadly many insurers think of you as just as number so will never see the impact of lack of insurance can have. An example of this is a householder who had a garage many streets away from their home in fact almost in the next town, poor original construction led the garage to collapse and require underpinned. This has led to difficulties in obtaining insurance on his unattached and unaffected home.