People tend not to change their provider as often as they would for car insurance. As the price of the policy on their house is usually significantly less than that on their car they believe that it is not worth the effort of shopping around. House insurance companies know this, so the cost of your premium creeps up a little every year, not enough to make you jump provider, but just enough to ensure that the insurance company's profits rise year after year. To get cheap house insurance consider changing your insurance provider every year, or at least shop around and use some of the house insurance quotes that are out there to force your current insurance provider to cut the cost of their house insurance renewal quote.

There are two main types of house insurance. Contents Insurance and Buildings Insurance. Normally if you are living in your own home you will require both these types of home insurance. At a very simple level buildings insurance is your physical house, walls roof, floors, windows, doors etc and fixtures and fittings, ie things that are attached to the house eg lights, bathrooms suite, kitchen etc. Contents insurance covers the things that you have in your house that you can easily remove from the house and are generally not bolted down. In certain situations you will need only one of these types of house insurance. For example tenants may not need buildings insurance and landlords may not need contents insurance.

There are some special cases for house insurance. As part of you contents insurance you may wish to insure separately items that can be removed from the house for example cameras, jewellery and bicycles. Also you may wish to record items of particular value like paintings or anything over £1000 separately in your house insurance.