Posts tagged "Letting Agent"

Commercial landlord insurance – contents cover

If you own, and rent or lease out, a property to a third party then you will need to have a residential or commercial property owners / commercial business insurance policy. Residential, is of course for houses and flats and is also known as buy to let insurance. Commercial is where you lease a business premises to a third party. Where there is a cross over, for example a shop with flats above, then this will always go under a commercial property policy.

It is not difficult to work out, in the main, what is covered. The building, or the structure, is what you need to have cover for. It is the actual bricks and mortar, roofs, windows, floors and internal fittings. Think of the buildings cover as everything that you would not necessarily take with you when you move house or premises. You may have a fitted laminate floor, this would fall under buildings. But what happens to curtains, carpets and flooring (including carpet tiles and moveable laminate)? Where should this be covered?

This will fall firmly and squarely under the contents insurance. Even if you have a carpet, which you would of course not take with you when you moved, this falls under contents because, if you wanted to, you could pick it up and take it with you.

This really only applies in the main to residential let properties. If you have a block of flats insurance policy, then you will need to give special consideration as to whether you have suitable cover for contents in communal areas. Speak to your business insurance broker about getting this included.

For single let residential properties, over 80% are let unfurnished. But, what a letting agent calls unfurnished and what a commercial insurance company call unfurnished are two entirely separate things. If you have carpets, curtains or any fitted white goods (ie fridges, freezers, dishwashers, washing machines or tumble dryers) then you need to have contents insurance.

Contents cover can be slightly more expensive than the buildings because it is more susceptible to damage and/or theft. But, without the cover you could be left financially out of pocket. The major source of claims to let properties is water damage. This is from burst pipes or storms. If water leaks in, it will always go to the lowest point and this usually involves damage to the flooring. You can, in very few cases, use a de-humidifier to remove any water from a carpet but this is notoriously difficult to do. You may think that it is clean and dry, but this is only the top. If water has seeped through the carpet then it will start to rot unless it is dried thoroughly. This in tune can start to rot any wooden floorboards, or worse still ruin any chipboard as this acts like a sponge.

If you have a landlord’s insurance policy, please take the time to review it to see if you have suitable buildings and contents cover. You will always need to insure for the full replacement cost. What this means is that you cannot just have £1,000 of cover, if it would cost £5,000 to re-carpet the house. As always, you are better arranging any type of non-domestic cover with a business insurance broker and they can help you source the right cover.

Does My Property Need Unoccupied Insurance?

Unoccupied properties require specialist insurance. You can’t insure them on a home or landlords insurance policy and hope that they pay out if a claim arises, as insurers view empty properties as a higher risk.

Why? Simply because there will be nobody around to deal with any problems. This is also the reason all unoccupied property insurance policies insist on a warranty where the building has to be inspected regularly. Usually this is at least once every 7 – 14 days, depending on who you are insured with. This can be a problem if you live some way away from the property, and you don’t know anyone local. In circumstances such as these, it is best to contact a local letting agent, who can inspect the property regularly on your behalf for a small monthly fee.

At this point it is probably worth mentioning that just about all empty house insurance policies also specify the heating system must be either drained completely, or kept on permanently at 13’C. This is to avoid pipes freezing in cold weather. Not only is it a sensible thing to do in it’s own right, but  insurance companies often take the view that a claim that could have been reasonably foreseen and easily avoided in the first place, is a claim they can reasonably turn down. In fact, during the recent cold weather snap where temperatures plunged as low as -10’C, this is precisely what happened, with many policy holders finding frozen pipe claims being declined on this basis.

With regard to charges, unoccupied buildings are rarely empty for exactly 12 months at a time, and frequently they are empty for much shorter periods than this. High cancellation fees could mean that a policy that initially appears to be cheapest might end up costing you significantly more than another policy with better cancellation terms. Often insurers offering empty property insurance require full payment up front, and many will keep at least half the premium upon early cancellation.

Alternatively, depending on what you are going to do with the property, many of the insurers that offer unoccupied property insurance policies, do also offer home insurance and residential let policies, so you may be able to simply swap from one policy type to another without penalty, so long as your policy stays with the same insurer.

Many vacant properties are empty because the owner has chosen to develop them, and this is often a stumbling block for insurers. How do you effectively insure a building that several strangers (i.e. builders and other contractors) may have unlimited access to? And how do you insure against damage when parts of that building may be under going quite serious alteration? The simple answer is to limit cover, usually to FLEEA cover, or variations of it, and exclude such cover as theft, escape of water, and damage caused by contractors who should have their own liability insurance anyway.

Is there anything else I can do to cover my property if I’m renovating it? Yes there is. As mentioned earlier, any contractors you use should have their own public liability insurance. It is common practice within the construction industry for corporate customers to request a copy of a builder’s liability insurance schedule, and this is becoming increasingly common among private customers, so don’t be afraid to ask for it. If they won’t provide one, use a different contractor. You never know, you might need to make a claim.

Having read this far, it should be obvious by now, that arranging insurance for an unoccupied property can be a bit of a minefield with so many issues to take into consideration, so it is best to take professional advice. Coversure Insurance are a broker who specialise in arranging unoccupied property insurance and all of the insurers they deal with are fully authorised and approved by the Financial Services Authority, so you can use them with confidence. Their staff are friendly and professional, so if you are just after advice to begin with, why not give them a call?