Many of the questions we're often asked about high value home insurance focus on the vexed business of rebuilding costs after a fire, flood or other accidental damage such as that caused by a storm.
Some of the questions are quite technical.
Others are more straightforward.
Working with Barrett Corp & Harrington, who specialise in reinstatement cost assessments for all types of residential and commercial buildings for the insurance market including listed and historic, we have put together a list of the most frequently asked questions and provided a set of answers.
With the downturn in the building industry, prices have fallen.
Why hasn't my assessment gone down? Insurance indices are based on researched tender prices, which are taken across all types of building, not just residential properties.
These tender prices do not actually reflect final accounts (which are never published) but - in a stable economic environment - are normally considered suitable for index linking.
Over the past year, the tender price index has remained fairly stagnant and has fallen in most regions.
However, there are regional differences and there have been increases in both labour and materials.
In an economic downturn, it is common practice for firms to seek to 'buy' work by submitting low tenders and, during the course of the project, find ways of increasing their margin and the final account.
Moreover, with listed buildings and high value properties in general, reinstatement work will call for specialist craftsmen, who are often in short supply, and for furnishings and fittings which, if they are sourced from Europe or elsewhere, will be subject to exchange rate fluctuations.
All these factors militate against reduced assessments that could reflect the general downturn in the building industry.