Custom Car Owners – If you have bought to let, the property itself is likely to represent a considerable investment and a financial outlay that you may wish to protect. But it is not just the bricks and mortar that might benefit your business from such financial protection:
The premises – the structure and fabric of the property, of course, is important to safeguard against such potentially catastrophic disasters as fire, flooding, storm damage, impacts, vandalism and (possibly) accidental damage, just as you might wish to protect your own home from such perils;
Where standard home cover may protect the owner-occupier against such hazards, however, purpose designed policies for landlords are required if the dwelling is to be let out to tenants;
Your contents – you may be the landlord, but that’s not to say that you might not have contents still in the premises that you wish to insure (contents owned by your tenants, of course, are their own responsibility for safeguarding);
Your liability – as a landlord, however, you are likely to bear responsibilities that the owner-occupier does not;
Probably chief among these responsibilities is your duty of care to your tenants. The principal landlord-tenant relationship means that any injury or loss or damage to the property of your tenants whilst in your property may lead to a claim against you alleging some failure in your duty of care;
Landlord insurance cover, therefore, typically seeks to indemnify you against such claims – and given the potential for such claims to assume very substantial sums, it is not uncommon for the level of indemnity to be up to a maximum of £1 million;
Loss of income – when something such as a fire or flooding might leave you temporarily without a home to live in, if you are a landlord it may also lead to the loss of valuable rental income. Some policies, therefore, provide compensation (up to maximum defined limits, of course) for such loss of earnings;
Rogue tenants – however hard you might try to ensure that your tenants are always the most reliable and well-behaved, there may always be the risk of ending up with the occasional rogue tenant lacking such respect for your property that malicious damage is caused. Some insurance policies for landlords, therefore, recognise this peril by covering you and your property against such risks;
Vacancies – any dwelling that is left unoccupied for periods typically extending to a month or more, may benefit from the protection of unoccupied property insurance.
If you are a landlord, however, such vacancies – between tenants moving out and before new ones move in or during times when you need to refurbish the property, for example – may be more common. Safeguarding your vacant buy to let premises may then prove a prudent precaution.