Home Insurance Quote

Getting a home insurance quote used to be a hassle: you would dig out the Yellow Pages, sit on the phone for hours and talk to insurance rep after insurance rep until you found a price that was slightly less than the value of your house. These days it's much easier: direct sellers such as Direct Line make it easy to get a home insurance quote without dealing with middlemen, and the advent of the Internet has made it possible to compare a whole bunch of home insurance quotes in a matter of minutes.

When it comes to getting a home insurance quote, different firms take different approaches. Direct Line and Egg ask you a few simple questions, whereas firms such as Admiral ask endless questions and bore you rigid. Others won't give you a home insurance quote at all: Swinton simply asks you to phone the company, while the more enlightened Liverpool Victoria has a "quick quote" button that gives you a ballpark price so that you can decide whether it's worthwhile giving them a phone.

Before you get a home insurance quote you'll need to know some key details: the value of your house, and the value of your contents. If you guess, you could end up without sufficient insurance in the event of disaster.

You'll also need to decide whether you want accidental damage cover or legal protection; most policies include these as optional extras, and you can ignore them if you want to keep your premium down.