I found Mrs T looking at Rightmove yesterday morning. This wasn’t surprising – she does that all the time! What piqued my interest this time though was a statement contained within the Agent’s particulars of a house that had caught Liz’s eye – ‘We understand from the vendor that this property has been underpinned.’

Enough to scare off any potential buyer I imagine. Probably the mortgage company too! But let’s focus on the insurance issues. After all that is why, I hope, you’re here!

Ask Google and you’ll find lots of posts on forums where people suggest to a prospective underpinned property purchaser that they’d be well advised to bail out and go find a property without any such issues. After all, there’s no way you’ll be able to insure the place.

If you can get past them you can find some hope in the archived newspaper articles that will also appear in the search results. There you’ll be told that you’ll be OK if you can transfer the existing insurance into your name. Failing that, there’s always specialist brokers. One name crops up regularly, a broker that until very recently was threatening to go under as it was unable to service its billions of pounds of debt any longer. Things really are desperate in the world of distressed property insurance!

Or are they?

We have exclusive access to a number of specialist products here, with one in particular catering for ‘distressed property’. I’ve already written about that product’s capabilities when it comes to properties within Flood risk areas and it’s also really good when it comes to those that have been underpinned.

Contrary to what is suggested elsewhere, premiums will be reasonable and the excess will be too. The most recent underpinned property I arranged cover for – a property in Northants that a chap in Somerset had bought as a rental investment – was at a similar premium to that of a property that wasn’t ‘distressed’ and the excess in respect of Subsidence was £2,500. That’s two-and-a-half times a standard Subsidence excess but not at all bad in the grand scheme of things.

You’ll also be covered by a consortium of A-rated insurers. So no concerns about the insurer going bust like some others you may be steered towards.

So, if you’ve got your heart set on a place that has been previously underpinned, give us a call about the insurance. I’m certain you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Alas, that means I haven’t managed to put Mrs T off the house she’s taken a fancy to yet. Wish me luck!