Moving Home? Here’s What It Could Mean For Your Car Insurance

Your address is a key factor in the cost of your car insurance, and moving home could impact how much you pay each year.  

To help with your household budgeting, we’ve crunched our data to create the MoneySuperMarket Moving Home Tool to give a quick indication of whether your car insurance premiums are likely to increase, decrease, or stay the same, based on your current and future postcodes: 

This tool is designed to give a quick snapshot of how your car insurance premium may change based on postcode alone, without considering other factors such as changes to average mileage or a different parking situation that could come with a home move. It’s a useful starting point, but it’s definitely still best to compare full car insurance quotes at the earliest opportunity prior to your move. 

Moving home is can be expensive, so checking if your new address could change your car insurance premium can help with planning your budget. Or…you might be nicely surprised! 

Will moving address change my car insurance premium?  

There is a good chance that your car insurance premiums may change because of moving home. We surveyed over 1,400 UK motorists to find that: 

• A fifth (20%) of drivers who have previously moved address said that their car insurance premium increased after a home move 

• However, 17% of drivers said changing address contributed to a decrease  

• Two thirds (65%) of car owners don't pre-check how much their car insurance premium would change before they moved home   

Why does moving home affect car insurance premiums?  

Different postcodes each have their own risk profile because of differing vehicle crime rates and accident data, which will influence car insurance premiums. This means that no two areas are likely to be viewed in the same way by an insurer. Things like historical claims in an area are also taken into account, in addition to other environmental factors such as the risk of storms or flooding, and general road conditions.  As a result, even moving a short distance can have an impact on car insurance premiums if there is a change in postcode. 

As a general rule of thumb, premiums may be more likely to increase if you’re moving from a lower to higher risk area, for example, from the countryside to a city centre. However, with so many factors contributing to how car insurance premiums are calculated, such as whether your car is parked in a garage, or on a driveway or other off-road parking space, it’s hard to say exactly how much a home move could impact your premium until you’ve secured a full quote with all the new details.  

Failing to update your home address can invalidate your car insurance policy  

Nearly one in five (18%) UK car owners said that they’d delayed updating their address with their car insurance provider because they were worried their premium would increase.  

Moving home is one of the biggest life events that most people will go through. According to recent research, it’s considered one of life’s most stressful events, with many people ranking it more challenging than a divorce or a romantic breakup¹.  

Part of the stress comes from how big the to-do list is when it comes to moving home: contracts to sign, home insurance to arrange, utilities to switch and moving boxes to pack. With all that going on, updating your car insurance policy details could be overlooked. Furthermore, according to our research some drivers have put off updating their car insurance details as they are worried about the cost increase.  However, failing to provide the correct address on your policy can incur severe consequences.   

With the wrong home address on your policy: 

• You are at risk of any car insurance claims you make being rejected 

• Your whole policy becoming invalid 

Our survey found that 70% of UK car owners said they were aware of these insurance risks if you fail to update your home address, and yet nearly one in five (18%) say it’s something they have deliberately delayed doing and thus knowingly putting themselves at risk during a home move.  

More than two-fifths of drivers (42%) said that updating their address with their car insurer is something that they may simply forget to do during a move, while a third (33%) of car owners said that they would find updating their address across different insurance services overwhelming.  

Thankfully, for MoneySuperMarket customers, our Policy Hub feature logs all policies purchased in one place, making it quicker and easier to find the policies that need to be updated. To find out more information about how our Policy Hub works, take a look at our FAQs page. 

Methodology  

Data collected via a survey of 1,452 UK car owners (aged 18+) conducted by Censuswide, all data correct as of June 2026.  

¹https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/almost-half-name-moving-house-as-most-stressful-life-event-lg/