Home & Contents Insurance - Compare Star Ratings

Carpet, blinds, curtains and air conditioners attached to windows all come under contents insurance, while fixed items such as air conditioners attached to walls, dishwashers in cabinets and tiles come under home insurance.

In most cases, flood-related events are not covered by home and contents insurance. If you live in an area where flooding is a risk, be sure to check with your insurer.

If you have bought, or are in the process of buying a home, congratulations. You now need to think about how to protect your investment in that asset.

Pruning premiums doesn't necessarily trim your cover.

Under-insurance is rife in Australia and it's not choosey. It has pretty much infiltrated every area of insurance but it's the home and contents horror stories we see in the media that really attract attention.

A major cause of under-insurance in Australia is the set-and-forget factor. We take out home and contents insurance initially and then simply forget about it. There are no updates done when renovations are finished, refurnishing takes place and other improvements are made.

Having a new-for-old replacement clause in the policy is essential when insuring your contents. With depreciation eating into the value of your goods, it's likely that they may be worth as little as 20% of what you originally paid.

It doesn't necessarily follow that doubling the amount you're insured for will double your insurance premium. That's the beauty of shopping around, particularly with the help of the CANSTAR CANNEX home & contents star ratings.

Flood cover is a major exclusion from most home insurance policies. Confusion arises the different terms insurers use to explain what they will and won't cover in relation to floods.

Stop and think about what plans you have put in place for your home insurance while you are away.

Home and contents insurance, like all other forms of insurance, takes several variables into consideration when determining the premium you have to pay to get the level of cover you want. We’ve put together a short list of 5 of the most important of these variables insurers use when determining how much you should pay.

Definitions of everything from "accidental glass breakage" to "obsolete electrical appliances", to help you understand all the finer points of home and contents insurance policies and details of cover.