Most New Zealand households hold a home insurance policy for decades and read it once. This site explains what the cover does, where it stops, and what an insurer asks before giving you a price. No prices, no rebuild guesses, and we collect nothing.
Start here
House insurance covers the building, not the things inside it. Furniture, clothes and appliances belong on a contents policy, which is a separate thing you buy separately. What counts as the building is wider than people expect, and usually takes in fences, driveways, paths and retaining walls.
Since the Canterbury earthquakes, almost every policy here has worked on a sum insured. You give the insurer a figure for what your house would cost to rebuild, and that figure is the most the building side can pay. Getting it wrong is the single most common reason a claim falls short.
Natural hazard damage comes in two layers. The Natural Hazards Commission covers a set amount of earthquake, flood and landslip damage, paid for by a levy on every policy that includes fire. Your insurer covers the rest, and you deal only with your insurer.
The last thing to know is about the market rather than the cover. There are more brands selling house insurance here than there are companies carrying the risk, and several of the names below lead back to the same insurer. The table says which.
The market
Every brand you can buy house cover from here, with who actually carries the risk behind it. Where we hold the policy wording, the review reads it line by line.
Highly rated
Cove
Underwritten by Vero Insurance New Zealand Limited
Underwritten by Vero. Its SumExtra benefit can pay above your sum insured for a house fire, with no percentage cap, if you already hold a rebuild estimate that meets the conditions.
One month of free premiums, capped at $100 per month per policy, when you buy through an approved partner link. Cove promotional terms, read 1 September 2026.
Read our review of the wordingHighly rated
AA Insurance
Carries its own risk
Carries its own risk. Writes three settlement bases into one policy and chooses between them, and the widest one depends on the sum insured you gave at quote time.
Read our review of the wording
AMI
Underwritten by IAG New Zealand Limited
An IAG brand. On its Replacement basis a fire claim is capped by the floor area on your schedule rather than by your sum insured.
Read our review of the wordingFMG
Carries its own risk
A rural mutual, owned by its members, insuring farms and lifestyle blocks since 1905. Where this site sends a farm or a lifestyle block, because an ordinary house policy is not written for the sheds, plant and liability that come with one.
Initio
Underwritten by NZI, a business division of IAG New Zealand Limited
Underwritten by NZI. A landlord and holiday home policy rather than an owner-occupier one, built around a house that is often empty.
Read our review of the wording
MAS
Carries its own risk
A mutual, owned by its members. Carries the highest limits of the eight wordings we have read, and is the only one that pays to repair the cause of a hidden leak.
Read our review of the wording
NZI
Underwritten by IAG New Zealand Limited
An IAG business division, sold through brokers rather than direct. We do not hold the house wording.
State
Underwritten by IAG New Zealand Limited
An IAG brand. Its wording measures 99.89% identical to AMI Home Plus once the brand names are set aside.
Read our review of the wording
Tower
Carries its own risk
Carries its own risk, and prices flood and earthquake exposure at individual property level. Also underwrites Trade Me Insurance.
Read our review of the wording
Trade Me Insurance
Underwritten by Tower Limited
Underwritten by Tower. House Plus carries Towerβs Plus limits benefit for benefit, so a quote from each is one insurer priced twice.
Read our review of the wording
Vero
Carries its own risk
A Suncorp insurer sold through brokers, and the underwriter behind several other brands.
Ratings are curated from a number of sources, including Google, Feefo and Trustpilot. They may not be completely up to date. They measure what reviewers said about dealing with a company, which is not the same thing as what its policy covers, and a brand shown as not rated is one we hold no reviews for rather than one that scored badly.
Highly rated rows appear first and are marked. Every other brand is listed alphabetically. Nothing in this table is ordered by how good the cover is, and no figure here is our assessment of any insurer.
What this site is
Almost everything hard about insuring a home here comes down to three things. First, the sum insured is your number, not the insurerβs. It is the rebuild figure on your policy, and most people set it once and never look again. Second, the questions you answer at the start decide how a claim goes years later. Third, the cover you need depends on who lives in the house, not on the house itself. The same building is four different products.
This site works through all three, one cover type at a time. We publish no prices and no rebuild estimates. Those numbers belong to insurers and valuers who have actually seen the house. What we do instead is set out what each cover usually includes, what it leaves out, and what the insurer will ask.
Cover types
Four main
Figures published
None
Information collected
None
Referral partner
Cove
The basics
A house policy covers the building and everything fixed to it. The roof, the walls and floors, the wiring and pipes inside them, and the kitchen and bathroom fittings that are attached rather than free-standing.
It usually covers the built things around the house too. Fences, decks, garages, carports, sheds, driveways, paths, retaining walls and in-ground pools. A lot of value hides in that list, and it is the part people forget when they work out a sum insured.
It also has to carry the cost of the rebuild itself. Knocking down what is left, clearing the site, and paying the architects, engineers and consent fees a rebuild needs. Those come out of the same figure as the house.
Your belongings. Furniture, appliances, clothes and electronics sit under a contents policy, which is a separate product with its own limit.
Wear and tear, and anything that goes wrong slowly instead of all at once. There is usually a small exception for hidden leaks from water pipes, and it is narrower than people expect.
Damage to the land itself, beyond what the Natural Hazards Commission covers. And in some cases, building work that never got consent, which is why insurers ask about it before they quote.
The number that matters most
01
Your sum insured is what it would cost to rebuild your house as it stands. It is not what the house would sell for, because most of that is the land. It is not the council rating value, which is worked out across thousands of properties at once by someone who has never seen yours. And it is not your mortgage. Those are four different numbers and only one of them pays a claim.
02
New Zealand moved to sum insured policies after the Canterbury earthquakes. That moved the job of working out a rebuild cost onto homeowners. Insurers give you a calculator and will accept a valuation, but the figure on the policy is yours, and it caps what the building side can pay.
03
Demolition and site clearance. Professional and consent fees. The fences, decks, driveways and retaining walls you forget are on the property at all. On a sloping section those can be a large share of the total.
04
Every big New Zealand insurer runs a free rebuild calculator, and most use the same underlying cost data. For anything out of the ordinary, a valuation is the better instrument. That means older homes, unusual construction, hard access, heritage features, or a lot of retaining. A registered valuer or a quantity surveyor gives you a number you can stand behind.
05
A figure that was right when you took the policy out can fall a long way behind. Building costs rise, you renovate, you add a deck. Because the sum insured is a ceiling, the gap only shows up when the house is destroyed, which is the worst possible time to find it.
The recurring problem
After the Canterbury earthquakes, New Zealand switched to sum insured policies. That moved the job of working out a rebuild cost onto homeowners. The figure has to cover more than the house. Knocking down what is left. Clearing the site. Architects, engineers and consent fees. Fences, decks, driveways and retaining walls you forget are even there. Most of the gap between what a policy pays and what a rebuild costs is made of those.
Compare the fine print
These are the limits inside eight New Zealand house policies. They are the numbers that decide what a claim pays, and almost nobody reads them. Pick a policy to see its figures next to what the rest of the market offers.
Single home product
Limits are only one part of a policy. A bigger limit can come with a tighter rule about when it pays, a bigger excess, or a longer list of exclusions. So a bigger number does not always mean better cover. Insurers also reissue these documents, and the one you are given is the one that settles your claim.
Read from each insurerβs own policy document on 1 September 2026.
Eight wordings, read line by line
Pick a part of the cover and see the limit in all eight policy wordings we have read, with the clause that decides what the money can be spent on.
These figures are ordered by size, which is arithmetic rather than a ranking. A larger limit is not better cover on its own: the clause behind it decides what the money can be spent on, and several of the largest figures here sit beside the narrowest triggers.
These products are not all the same level. Towerβs is its entry-level Standard cover, AMIβs and Stateβs are their top tier, and Initioβs is a landlord and holiday home policy rather than an owner-occupier one. Compare the level, not just the number.
Before you get a price
01
The address, the year it was built, the floor area, how many storeys, and what the walls and roof are made of. Insurers can look a lot of this up and often fill it in for you. The answers you confirm are the ones that count.
02
Behind the form is a set of rules covering flood and earthquake risk, how close you are to the coast, what the house is built of, how easy it is to reach, and its age and condition. Those rules decide whether you get a price on the spot, get sent to a person, or get turned down.
03
Past claims at the address. Cover that has ever been turned down or cancelled. Building work, and whether it had consent. Damage that is already there. This is the part where later claim arguments usually start, so it is worth getting right.
04
You give them the figure, usually after running their rebuild calculator or getting a valuation. It is the most the building side of the policy can pay.
05
A bigger excess usually means a lower premium. Natural hazard claims often carry their own separate excess. Optional extras differ between insurers and are priced one by one.
Why prices moved
Insurers used to spread flood and earthquake risk across a whole area. A house on a floodplain and a house up the hill paid about the same, and the insurer carried the difference across everyone.
That has changed. Prices are now worked out address by address, based on that propertyβs own risk. Two houses on the same street can be quoted very differently, and your price can jump at renewal even though nothing about your house has changed.
It cuts both ways. A house with low risk may do better with an insurer that prices this way. A house with high risk may find the opposite, and may find the cover narrows as well as the price rising.
Building costs rose, and so did the cost of the insurance that insurers themselves buy. New Zealand has also had a run of large natural hazard events, and those get paid for.
The things you control are smaller but real. Your excess, since a larger one usually means a lower premium. Whether you hold more than one policy with the same insurer. Whether you pay annually or monthly.
Because pricing is now so specific to one address, an old quote tells you very little, and one expensive renewal does not tell you much either. More than one quote is the only way to find out where you sit.
Who writes the cover
Fourteen brands sell house cover in New Zealand, and a good number of them share a company behind the scenes. The underwriter is the company that carries the risk and pays the claim, and it is often not the name on the policy.
AMI and State are both IAG New Zealand brands. We read both policy documents side by side and they are 99.75% identical, with the differences being the brand name, the phone number and the product title. Every benefit limit matches. Tower underwrites Trade Me Insurance, which Towerβs own documents state. Most banks sell cover that a separate licensed insurer stands behind.
This matters when you are gathering quotes. Three quotes from three brands can be fewer than three opinions, and the spread between them is narrower than it looks. Knowing which brands belong together is most of the value in comparing.
By how the home is used
Insurers sell these as separate products, with different documents and different rules about what they will take on. Which one you need comes down to who lives there.
Who insures homes here
Listed A to Z. The order means nothing and we do not rank insurers. Where we have read a brandβs policy document, the page sets out every benefit and its limit.
The words, explained
House insurance uses a lot of words it never defines. These take them one at a time.
FAQ
Nothing. Both mean cover for the building and the things fixed to the property. New Zealand insurers use the two words to mean the same thing. The difference that does matter is between insuring the building and insuring what is inside it. Your belongings need a contents policy, which is a separate product with its own limit.
No law says you have to have it. A mortgage does. Your lender will require the house to be insured for its full rebuild cost, with the bank noted on the policy. So while you have a mortgage, you effectively have to hold cover. Once the mortgage is gone, it is your call.
Several things at once. Building costs went up. So did the cost of the insurance that insurers themselves buy. New Zealand has had a run of big natural hazard events. And insurers now price house by house for flood and earthquake risk instead of averaging across an area. That last change is why increases have been so uneven. Two houses in the same street can move very differently.
No. This is an information site. We are not an insurer, not a broker, and not a financial adviser. We collect nothing about you and we run no quote forms. Cove is the one brand we refer people to, and we say so on every page.
Because a number worked out without seeing your house is a guess. Acting on a guess is how homes end up underinsured. A real sum insured comes from an insurerβs calculator, or from a valuer who has looked at the property. A real price comes from an insurer after they have assessed the risk. Publishing rough versions of either would make a very important number look more exact than it is.
It is a dollar figure on your policy. It is what it would cost to rebuild your house as it stands now. It is the most the policy will pay for the building. You supply the number, not the insurer. It is not the price you paid, not the council rating value, and not your mortgage.
The excess is what you pay towards a claim before the insurer pays the rest. A higher excess usually means a lower premium. Natural hazard claims often carry their own separate excess, which can be much larger than the standard one. Your policy schedule lists every excess that applies to you.
The building and the things fixed to it. That means the roof, walls and floors, the wiring and pipes inside them, and the kitchen and bathroom fittings that are attached. It usually covers the built things around the house too. Fences, decks, garages, sheds, driveways, paths, retaining walls and in-ground pools. It also has to carry the cost of the rebuild itself, like clearing the site and paying consent fees.
Your belongings, which need a separate contents policy. Wear and tear, and anything that goes wrong slowly rather than suddenly. Damage to the land itself, beyond what the Natural Hazards Commission covers. And in some cases, building work that never got consent, which is why insurers ask about it.
It is shared. The Natural Hazards Commission Toka TΕ« Ake pays the first part of natural hazard damage to your house, and some damage to the land around it. Your own insurer pays above that, up to your sum insured. You only ever make one claim, to your insurer, and they sort out both parts.
Usually not as ordinary damage. Insurance pays for sudden events, and a slow leak is not one. Most New Zealand policies add a small benefit for hidden leaks from water pipes, and the limits are low. Across the eight policies we read they run from $1,000 to $5,000. Whether your leak fits that benefit depends on your policy document.
It depends on the insurer, and sixty or ninety consecutive days are common limits. After that, cover is usually cut back to a short list of events, and theft and vandalism are often the first to go. A house sits empty for ordinary reasons, like a slow sale or a renovation that runs long. Telling the insurer before you reach the limit is what protects you.
Often, yes. AMI and State are both IAG New Zealand brands, and their policy documents are almost word for word the same. Tower underwrites Trade Me Insurance. Most banks sell cover that another licensed insurer carries the risk on. So three quotes from three brands can be fewer than three opinions.
A policy written for a home you live in is not designed for a tenanted one, and cover can be affected if the insurer was never told. Insurers sell a separate landlord product for this. It adds things a normal policy leaves out, like lost rent after damage. Telling your insurer the house is rented out is what keeps the cover working.
Disclaimer
Home insurance is one of the few contracts most households hold for decades and read once. What a policy covers, what it excludes, and what has to be disclosed before it starts all vary between insurers and between versions of the same product, and the wording is what settles a claim. This site explains how the cover generally works so those conversations start from a better place. It is not a substitute for the policy document.
What this site is
An information site about insuring a home in New Zealand. Not an insurer, not a broker, not a registered financial adviser. Nothing here is personalised financial advice or a recommendation about any particular property.
What this site does not do
It publishes no premiums, no rebuild costs and no sum-insured figures, and nothing here estimates one. Those numbers come from an insurer's own calculator or a registered valuer, and getting them wrong is what underinsurance is made of.
What the insurer decides
Whether cover is offered, on what terms, at what price and with what exclusions is decided by the insurer, on the information given to them about the specific property.
Our relationship with Cove
This site refers people to three insurance brands. Cove for most homes, FMG for farms and lifestyle blocks, and AA Insurance for apartments. We receive no commission, fee or payment for any of those referrals, and nothing on this site is sold. No brand can buy a position, a badge or a mention. We are not an insurer, not a broker, and not a registered financial adviser. Nothing here is a recommendation that any brand is right for any particular home. Full disclosure on the partner page.
The policy wording decides
Every description of cover on this site describes what that type of cover generally does, not what any particular policy does. Limits, excesses, exclusions and conditions differ between insurers and change between versions, and the wording issued with a policy is the document that settles a claim.
Four questions, no figures
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