Your new home is covered by LABC Warranty insurance

Homes on The Reeds are covered by insurance from LABC Warranty. Latent defect insurance, also known as a structural warranty, protects from serious defects that may have arisen in the construction of their home.

An intro to structural warranty cover

A structural warranty shows that a risk management specialist has inspected your home and certified that the building work has no serious defects that would leave a homeowner paying to remedy major problems in their new home.

If after construction is completed there is a serious issue with your new home, remedial work will be undertaken.

The kind of issues covered by structural warranty

Serious defects can include water ingress, problems with foundations, significant cracking and more.

LABC Warranty’s construction risk experts work alongside your builder and visit the site at various stages of construction. This includes foundation stages, the installation of your key utilities, the ‘first fix’ (before plaster goes on), and then another visit after your plaster has been hung.

They look for serious issues in the building process that could, down the line, turn into serious failures that leave a homeowner out of pocket. Not every problem with a home, however, is a defect. Some issues that home buyers commonly experience in new homes aren’t covered by latent defects insurance. These are called ‘snags’.

Defects vs snags

A ‘snag’ is normally a cosmetic issue or imperfection that doesn’t have any meaningful impact on the overall structural soundness of a home.

Snags include things like plaster cracking while drying, minor paint imperfections or scuffs on walls.

Whilst these may not be covered under the structural warranty your developer, may have to deal with some of these issues through their after-sales service.

Of course, no one can see every problem coming, and sometimes homeowners do need to claim against their warranty for more serious defects or structural issues.

What the claims process looks like

If a homeowner does suspect that a fault in their home, they will be assisted by the LABC Warranty team.

They will ask for details, photographs, and most likely send a surveyor to examine the property and assess the nature and extent of the defect.

This process will assess whether the issue is a snag, or if it’s a defect. If the issue is a defect, it will be escalated to our claims team.

Who pays if there’s a serious issue with the home?

For the first two years after a home is completed, the builder or developer of the home is responsible for remedying any defects in the property.

For the eight years following this, LABC Warranty will be responsible for remedying any major defects found in your house.

In total, a homeowner is protected for a full decade after the construction of their home for any serious problems caused by failures in the construction of the home.

What else is covered by structural warranty?

Depending on the details of your coverage, electronics that were in the home when you bought it may also be covered by your structural warranty, such as air conditioning, ground source heat pumps or electric vehicle chargers. Cover could also include contaminated land.

Beyond that, the focus of latent defects insurance is on the overall structural integrity of the home itself, and not its contents. Homeowners will still need to provide their own contents insurance.

For full details of the policy cover you should consult the policy documents including the Insurance Product Information Document (IPID) available from the builder of your home.

Learn more about your structural warranty

For more useful information on structural warranties, and more about your rights and responsibilities under your warranty, visit our homeowners’ hub here.