What you need to know
It's now be your responsibility to make sure your sum insured is going to be enough to rebuild your home. It's important to understand that the sum insured shouldn't be your rateable market value or your existing mortgage amount. Rather it's the total cost of rebuilding your home, excluding the land. The cost of rebuilding your home could also change over time. This might happen because construction costs change or because you've completed a renovation or addition to your home. To ensure your sum insured stays accurate, you should review it whenever your policy renews or after any major work. You need to review the default sum insured and consider if it's going to be enough to rebuild your home. It's especially important to do this if you have any special or high end features, because this default amount is likely to be insufficient in this situation.
It can be hard to know what will impact your rebuild value, so to help you understand some of these items, check out the short video put together by TOWER. It walks you through a few different New Zealand homes, and points out some of the features that can add cost or complexity when building.
You don’t need to work out the rebuild value for your home all by yourself. This website provides some of the information you’ll need to consider when working out the rebuild value, as well as links you to calculators and registered professionals who can help.
Next step: Go to "What do you need to do?"