I've just been using the on-line rebuilding cost calculator at
http://www.abi.org.uk/Public/Consume...Calculator.asp
or
http://tinyurl.com/6skke to check up on my insurance valuations on a pair of
adjacent terraced houses I own (regular readers will recall all my plaintive
cries for help earlier this year while I was in the midst of subdividing
these from the single property which it used to be!).

Now, I've used the calculator to generate rebuild costs for each house, and
then for the hell of it, added them together to get the costs for the whole
original property. Slightly surprised to find that this was precisely equal
to the sum of the two smaller properties; ie, rebuild cost is proportional
to the floor area and nothing else.

I realise that's the principle of insurance rebuild costs as opposed to
market valuations, nevertheless, can this be right? Surely, now there are
two bathrooms and two kitchens for example; there are two sets of
'professional fees' to be included etc.?

Another oddity (to me) is that rebuild costs seem to be a lot higher for
older houses than for modern ones. Why is that? If you're having to
rebuild from scratch in the event of total loss, what difference does it
make how old the original burnt out shell was?

David