The latent defects market has increased significantly in recent years, with there now being more companies in the market than ever before. As such, it can be difficult to know where to look and what to look for.
In the following article we explore the varying aspects of a quality provider and some questions you can ask during your decision process.
What is the financial limit for each property?
More often than not, structural warranty companies will provide insurances policies that have been underwritten by insurance companies, rather than underwriting the policy themselves. This means that any claims on the policy will be paid by the insurer.Compared to a most common insurance policies, structural warranties last for 10 or 12 years, meaning that it’s even more important to check the quality of the insurer and to ensure that they will be around for the entire duration of the policy.One way of doing this is to check who is insuring the policy and then to check their financial rating. The following link is a useful tool for checking this.
Another important aspect of your warranty provider is the quality of customer service they provide; after all, you will be dealing with the customer service department of your chosen provider a lot over the duration of your build, as well as them issuing all your relevant certificates. So, what do you need to know?
How will you track and measure site performance?
How quickly can you expect to get a response to your queries?
How long have they been providing structural warranties?
Are they accepted by all major mortgage lenders?
Rather than focusing just on monetary values, it is worth looking at value of your provider on the whole. Of course it’s vital to look after those all-important purse strings, but it’s also a must to consider the overall value from your chosen provider. By asking the above questions, and making sure you are satisfied with the answers, you should be able to better understand the value that your chosen structural warranty provider will be able to contribute to your build.