If he's sharing with people it'll be difficult to get it. Generally the rule is (or has been, I'd be very happy for someone to inform me things have changed) that if there are people from more than two different families living in shared accomodation no insurers will offer you a policy. The only place I have ever found that would offer us insurance was Bank of Ireland but they rang their underwriters and the only way they would give it to us was if all four people in the house took out separate policies - I would have gone with it as I own by far more of the contents of our house (furniture and so on) but the others were not keen and I couldn't afford to pay four premiums myself.