If residential property is going to be left vacant for a significant period of time, it’s generally worth giving serious consideration to unoccupied property insurance. This somewhat specialist insurance is often necessary because most home insurance policies and buy to let landlord insurances typically reduce the level of cover on the property once it has been left empty for a given period. This may typically be as short a period as 30 days, depending on the particular home building and contents insurance policy you choose.

• There could be a number of reasons why your property is empty and may benefit from vacant property insurance:
• you might have moved on to a new home, whilst leaving your former residence unoccupied pending its sale;
• perhaps you have inherited the property and it remains empty whilst you and other members of the family decide its future;
• it might be under repair or refurbishment that is extensive enough to warrant your moving out for the duration of the works;
• the previous reason might also apply to buy to let property of course, which is also likely to remain unoccupied for indefinite periods of time following the departure of one set of tenants until new ones move in.

With unoccupied property insurance, of course, you know where you stand with respect to not only to the “normal” risks faced by any property, but those additional risks likely to occur when the premises are standing empty.

These sorts of risks may include things like:

• burglars – when there’s no one at home to deter them, unoccupied houses may attract the unwelcome attention of would-be thieves;
• domestic emergencies – things that you may normally notice and can attend to before it grows in to something bigger – such as a leak – may go unnoticed in a property that is unoccupied.

This increased vulnerability is something that the insurer might be counted upon to have taken into account, meaning that getting an unoccupied property insurance policy in place could give your asset all-round protection against the unexpected.

Tags: Unoccupied Property Insurance

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Unoccupied Property Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.