Insurance and displaced family stays in Birmingham
Insurance accommodation in Birmingham
Whole homes in Birmingham for families out of their house after a fire, a flood or an escape of water. Pets considered, schools taken into account, and the insurer invoiced directly.
Or call reservations on 0333 880 7213
The short answer
Alternative accommodation in Birmingham while your home is unusable.
If a fire, a flood or an escape of water has made your house unliveable, your policy almost certainly pays for somewhere else while it is repaired. That is called alternative accommodation, and it is what we provide in Birmingham: a whole furnished house or apartment, for as long as the works take, with the bills included and the invoice going to the insurer or the loss adjuster rather than to you. We deal with adjusters regularly and we know what they need in writing. Our Birmingham properties are in the Jewellery Quarter, walking distance from the centre.
Called a few different things
You will see this called several things and they all mean the same. Insurance accommodation Birmingham, alternative accommodation, displaced family accommodation, emergency accommodation, temporary accommodation after a flood or fire, loss of use accommodation, or simply what the policy calls alternative accommodation. If a loss adjuster has asked you to find somewhere, this is the page.
What the first week is actually like
Two hotel rooms, a microwave and the school run, for four months.
That is what usually happens first, and it is nobody's fault: the insurer needs somewhere immediately and a hotel is what is available at nine at night. It stops working within about a fortnight. A family needs a kitchen, separate bedrooms, somewhere to put the things that were salvaged and a school run that has not doubled. It suits you if:
Where you would be
Staying near your own life in Birmingham.
Staying inside the same catchment
The thing most families want to protect is the school run, and Birmingham is big enough that moving a few miles puts you the wrong side of it. Harborne, Moseley, Kings Heath, Hall Green, Sutton Coldfield and Solihull are separate worlds in practice, however close they look. A house three miles from the old one can still mean a completely different morning for everybody.
The suburbs behave differently
Most families out of their home in Birmingham end up in the residential ring rather than a city centre flat, and that is usually the right call. What you get is a house with a garden, settled neighbours and somewhere to put whatever was salvaged. What you give up is walking to everything, and a centre that empties at the weekend suits very few families anyway.
Parking and the charging zone
Almost all of the residential suburbs sit outside the Clean Air Zone boundary, so an ordinary school run and supermarket trip never crosses it. It only bites if somebody drives into the city centre regularly for work. Off street parking is normal in the outer suburbs and scarce in inner areas like Selly Oak and Balsall Heath, where permit schemes and full kerbs are the standard.
A claim runs longer than quoted
Fire and escape of water claims commonly run for months rather than weeks, and the date you are given at the outset has a habit of moving. It is worth choosing somewhere you could live properly through a whole school year, not somewhere you are tolerating for eight weeks. The second kind of house becomes very hard to live in around week ten.
High streets and parks nearby
The southern suburbs are well set up for an ordinary week. Cannon Hill Park has the playgrounds and the open space, Highbury Park sits close behind it, and Harborne, Moseley, Kings Heath and Stirchley all have working high streets with a chemist, a butcher and somewhere to sit down. That ordinariness is most of what makes a long displacement bearable for children.
Where visitors put their car
This only surfaces once you have moved in. A house may come with one drive and nothing else, and plenty of suburban streets run permit schemes that do not cover guests. If grandparents are coming over each week to help with the children, it is worth knowing in advance where the second car goes. Small things like that turn into a weekly argument surprisingly quickly.
The school run sets the day
Traffic here is noticeably lighter in the school holidays and noticeably worse in the first week of September. On the Bristol Road, the Hagley Road and the A435 the gap between leaving at half past eight and leaving at nine is large. If the replacement house adds even fifteen minutes to the run, that is the change the family will feel most, every morning.
You are not on holiday
The hard part of a long claim is that it looks like a house move but nobody chose it. Bikes, instruments, the loft and half the kitchen usually stay in storage, so wherever you land has to hold a normal life with fewer things in it. Room for homework, drying washing and a table everyone fits round matters far more than the address does.
Booking direct
The same property, without the platform's cut.
Our properties are on Airbnb and Booking.com as well, and you are welcome to book there. Booking direct also avoids the guest service fee the big platforms add on top, which on a longer Birmingham stay is not a small number. Booking with us direct also means you are talking to the people who actually run the property rather than a message thread inside an app, which matters when you need an early check-in or an extra week.
Message reservations rather than booking online, and tell us the postcode you have come out of and which school or work you need to stay near. We will tell you honestly what we have close to it and what we do not, and we will deal with the adjuster directly from there.
In every property
What is actually there when you arrive.
Birmingham questions
What people ask about staying in Birmingham.
Which part of Birmingham should I be in?
Most of what you would need day to day sits in the Jewellery Quarter, the city core, Digbeth and Edgbaston. Tell us where you need to be each morning rather than which postcode you fancy, and we will be honest about what is close to it and what only looks close.
Can I park in Birmingham?
The Clean Air Zone covers the city centre inside the A4540 ring road and charges older vehicles daily, which is a real cost if you are driving in every day. Check your vehicle before you book. Outside the zone it is ordinary city parking, tight in the residential streets and paid in the centre.
How easy is it to get around Birmingham without a car?
New Street puts London inside an hour and twenty, the NEC and the airport are ten minutes on the train, and the tram runs through the centre.
What is there to do in Birmingham on a day off?
The canals, the Jewellery Quarter, Digbeth and the Bullring are all inside a walk of the core, and the Lickey Hills, Cannock Chase and Stratford are inside an hour. Birmingham rewards a bit of exploring on a long stay, because almost none of the good parts are the parts on a postcard.
Questions we get asked
What families and adjusters ask us.
Will the insurer pay you directly?
In almost every case, yes. We invoice the insurer or the loss adjuster on their terms, with the dates, the address and the claim reference, so you are not putting months of accommodation on a credit card and waiting to be reimbursed. Give us the adjuster's details and we will take it from there.
How long can we stay?
As long as the works take. Claims like this commonly run three to nine months and we would rather book you for the realistic length than move you twice. If the schedule slips, which it usually does, extending is a message.
Can we bring the dog?
Some properties take pets and some do not, so ask early rather than at the end. It is one of the most common reasons a hotel stops working for a family and one of the easiest things for us to solve if we know at the start.
We need to stay in the same school catchment.
Tell us the school and the postcode rather than the city. That is the constraint that actually decides this, and we would rather say we have nothing close enough than put you somewhere that adds forty minutes to every morning.
Check availability
Tell us the postcode you have come out of.
Message reservations with the postcode, how many of you there are and whether there is a pet, and we will tell you straight away what we have near you.
Reservations, seven days a week, on 0333 880 7213