My girlfriend and I have recently become engaged, we are currently renting house while we wait to find our own.
Our question is, do we need to take out separate insurance on the engagement ring or is it covered as part of the contents in the lanlords house insurance cover.
The landlord would have his/her contents covered only not your contents. make sure to put the engagement ring on an all-risks policy in order to have the ring covered when it is out of the house
It is very difficult to get insurance if you are renting however the main sticking point seems to be if there are people from more than two families sharing. If there are just the two of you it should be possible to get a policy.
I'm sharing a house with one other person now but the landlady or her husband use the third room in the house for one night every month or so. This means technically there are three people from different families living in the house (according to the insurers) and so I'm still not able to get any insurance for my contents.
The only place I ever found that was willing to do it was Bank of Ireland but they wanted each individual in the house to take out a separate policies (so there would have been four policies in place for the same house, inlcuding a potential fifth if the landlord had contents cover, which presumably he did) - unfortunately I couldn't persuade my housemates at the time to do this nor afford to pay four premiums myself.