Compare home and contents insurance quotes

Building, contents or both

Home insurance in Australia is sold as two covers that can be bought separately or together.Building insurance covers the structure: anything permanently attached, from the roof to the built-in kitchen.Contents insurance covers what you would take with you if you moved. Moneysmart's shorthand for the boundary is that a floor rug is contents but the floorboards are not.

Building or renovating? Home warranty insurance is a different product: builders in most states must arrange it for residential work over a set value.

Which you need depends on how you hold the property. Owners of a house usually insure both. If you rent, the landlord insures the building and you needcontents cover for renters. If you own a unit, the owners corporation insures the building understrata insurance, and you insure your contents. If you rent a property out, you needlandlord insurance, because most home policies limit or exclude cover once a home is tenanted.

What home insurance covers, and what it usually doesn't

Most Australian home and contents policies are listed-events policies. They pay for loss or damage caused by the events they name, and nothing else. The list is broadly similar between insurers; the differences are in the definitions, the exclusions and the limits, which is why two policies that both "cover storm" can pay out very differently on the same claim.

Flood deserves its own mention. Since the introduction of a standard definition, flood means the same thing in every home policy: normally dry land covered by water escaping from a natural watercourse, lake, reservoir, canal or dam. Rain falling on the house and run-off across the ground are usually treated as storm instead. Ourflood insurance guide walks through the difference, and the bushfire guidecovers the 72-hour rule and what a Bushfire Attack Level does to rebuild costs.

Sum insured or total replacement

Almost every building policy sold in Australia today is a sum insured policy: you nominate the most the insurer will pay to rebuild, and the premium is calculated on it. Many policies add a buffer, a set percentage above the sum insured that becomes available if a total loss costs more than expected. Total replacement cover, which pays the actual rebuild cost without a nominated cap, is now rare. Moneysmart's advice is to check which of these a policy uses before comparing prices, because a sum insured policy with no buffer puts the whole risk of a low estimate on you.

The sum insured for a building is the cost to rebuild, not the market value. Market value includes the land, which is not destroyed in a fire, and it follows the property market rather than building costs. Rebuild cost also has to include the costs that come before and around the new house: demolition and debris removal, asbestos, council fees, architects and engineers, and the cost of meeting today's building standards. Our step-by-step guide,how much to insure your home for, goes through building and contents in turn, and itscontents insurance calculatoradds up your belongings room by room.

Underinsurance: the costly mistake that stays hidden

Moneysmart describes underinsurance as very common in Australia and notes that most people who are underinsured do not know it. It builds up quietly: building costs rise, a kitchen is renovated, new furniture arrives, and the sum insured chosen years ago stays where it was. ASIC's own report on the problem, Getting home insurance right, found that depending on the survey, between 27 and 81 per cent of consumers were underinsured by 10 per cent or more; one survey put the average shortfall at 34 per cent. That report dates from 2005, but the mechanism has not changed.

The stakes show up after catastrophes. The 2022 floods in south-east Queensland and northern NSW produced about 246,000 claims and $6.37 billion in insured losses, the costliest insured event in Australian history according to the Insurance Council of Australia. ASIC's review of how insurers handled claims from that period, Navigating the storm (2023), examined more than 218,000 claims.

The bigger surprise for many people is the averaging or coinsurance clause. Moneysmart explains that most policies with one apply it when the sum insured falls below about 80 to 90 per cent of the true replacement value, and that it reduces every claim in proportion, not only a total loss. Try it with your own numbers below; the default figures are Moneysmart's own example.

The calculator follows the method in Moneysmart's worked example. Check your own policy's coinsurance clause: some policies have none, and wording differs.

What sets your premium

Home insurance is priced address by address. Insurers model the chance and cost of claims at your location, then adjust for the home itself, the cover you choose and your history. That is why two neighbours can pay different amounts. It is also why the ACCC's Northern Australia Insurance Inquiry examined the much higher premiums in cyclone-exposed areas, and why the Commonwealth has run a cyclone reinsurance pool, backed by a $10 billion guarantee, since July 2022.

Taxes and levies by state

The premium on your quote includes taxes that have nothing to do with the insurer. GST applies to home insurance premiums, and every state and the Northern Territory charge insurance stamp duty on top; the ACT abolished it in 2016. NSW is now the only state that still funds its emergency services partly through a levy collected via home insurance premiums, which is then itself subject to GST and stamp duty. The other states fund them through property rates or a separate charge. These differences change the final price of the same cover from state to state.

What home insurance costs

The ACCC's latest insurance monitoring report put the average combined home and contents premium at $2,360 in 2024–25, and the average building-only premium at $1,852. Those are averages across very different homes, and the spread is wide: the same report found combined premiums averaging $4,966 in northern Western Australia against $2,310 outside northern Australia. Use the figures as a benchmark for a quote, not a prediction of yours.

The Actuaries Institute measures the same market a different way. Its latest report, published in August 2024, modelled what a full building and contents policy would cost every household as at March 2024, including taxes and levies, and compared it with household income. It estimated a mean premium of $2,774 and a median of $2,199, and found 15% of households in affordability stress, meaning the premium would cost them more than four weeks of gross income. Queensland and the Northern Territory had the highest modelled premiums and the largest shares of stressed households.

The two series aren't comparable: the ACCC averages premiums insurers actually charged, while the Actuaries Institute modelled a premium for every household, insured or not. Compare within a series, not across them. What moves your own premium is covered in what sets your premium above.

How to compare home insurance quotes using the Key Facts Sheet

Since November 2014, home building and contents insurers have had to give you a Key Facts Sheet for each policy, within 14 days of you asking, and publish it on their website. Its layout is set by the Insurance Contracts Regulations, so the same information appears in the same order for every insurer: whether the policy is sum insured, sum insured with a safety net, or total replacement; a table of events marked covered, not covered or optional, including flood; and the main limits and excesses. It is the fastest way to see whether two quotes are for the same cover. The Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) then gives the detail.

1. 1Set your sum insured first, using a calculator, and use the same figure for every quote.
2. 2Read each insurer's Key Facts Sheet. It follows a government-set format, so the events covered, the main exclusions and limits sit in the same place for every policy.
3. 3Check whether each policy uses a sum insured, adds a buffer above it, or offers total replacement.
4. 4Compare the events that matter where you live: flood, storm, bushfire, cyclone. A policy without flood is a different product, not a cheaper version of the same one.
5. 5Line up the excess, including separate excesses for earthquake or specific claims, and whether a combined claim attracts one excess or two.
6. 6Look at the limits inside the policy: temporary accommodation, contents item limits, debris removal, and legal liability.
7. 7Only then compare price, and check the renewal notice each year against the premium you paid last year.

Moneysmart also reminds readers that comparison websites are businesses that may earn money from the products they show and may not cover every insurer. That applies to us too: use any comparison, including ours, as a starting point and read the Key Facts Sheet of the policy you choose.

Who issues Australia's home insurance brands

Many home insurance brands are sold by one company and issued by another, and a handful of insurers stand behind most of the familiar names. AAI Limited issues AAMI, Suncorp, GIO, Apia and Shannons policies; companies in the IAG Group issue NRMA, CGU and RACV policies; and Allianz, Auto & General and Hollard each issue several brands. This is how the market is structured, read from each brand's current PDS. It isn't a list of who we compare.

If you want to know who is biggest, there is no current public ranking of home insurers by size. APRA's institution-level statistics report whole-company figures, not home insurance by insurer, and the ACCC's June 2026 report discusses IAG, QBE, Allianz and Suncorp as the 4 largest insurers without publishing market shares. Sharing an insurer doesn't make two brands' policies the same, so compare Key Facts Sheets rather than names.

Complaints data, and how to read it

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority publishes complaint numbers by firm in its Datacube, updated monthly. Home building insurance was the subject of 29.63% of the general insurance complaints that progressed to AFCA's case management stage in 2025–26, second only to motor vehicle insurance at 33.8%. These are the firms with the most home building complaints that progressed that far.

Read the numbers with care. They are raw counts, not rates, so an insurer with more customers will tend to have more complaints than a small one. Firms are listed by legal entity, so one entity can cover several brands. A complaint is a dispute that reached AFCA, not a declined claim, and we found no official ranking of home insurers by claims refused. AFCA itself says the data shouldn't be the only basis for a financial decision. Use it as one signal alongside the Key Facts Sheet, and if you have a dispute of your own, take it to the insurer first, then to AFCA, which is free.

Home insurance guides

Each guide goes deeper into one kind of cover, one situation or one risk.

Insuring the car as well? See how car insurance cover types compare, since many insurers discount combined policies.

Home and contents insurance FAQs