As a landlord, you’ve probably got about 1001 things to think about. It’s also a fair bet that getting a landlord insurance quote maybe isn’t towards the top of the list in interest terms!

The landlord

The first thing is to be clear about is what a landlord is and what a landlord insurance quote is.

If you’re renting out your property or part of your property for the purposes of generating income, then the reality of life is that you’re a landlord. This may be the case even in situations that you regard as trivial, for example:

• renting out your property for a few weeks during the summer months by way of a holiday let;
• renting out a single room of your house to, say, a student;
• charging a relative a notional rent while they occupy your flat during for a few weeks while you’re on an overseas business trip, etc.

The important thing about the position is not that you’re now called a landlord but rather that your insurance position is now fundamentally different to that of an owner-occupier. Buy to let house insurance may be worth considering.

Landlords’ insurance

As a landlord, your insurance responsibilities and risk profile change significantly.

Insurance companies typically see a rented property as carrying more risk than one that’s owner-occupied and have specific insurance for landlord policies to cover those circumstances.

Although it’s not always a pleasant message to communicate, the fact of the matter is that standard owner-occupier buildings and contents insurance is typically not valid for rented property. You’ll typically need to obtain a landlord insurance quote and then eventually a landlords’ insurance policy.

This type of insurance is also sometimes referred to as buy to let house insurance or variations thereof.

Is it really higher risk?

Yes.

As a landlord, your property has additional risks of damage, theft and third party related claims, simply because of the presence of tenants.

It may also be empty more frequently than an owner-occupied property when in between lets and empty properties are also higher risk than those that are occupied.
If you only have owner-occupier cover and try to claim for a problem on a rented property, you may find that the policy is automatically invalidated and your claim may be refused (and insurance companies do have ways of finding out the occupancy status of a property in the circumstances of a claim).

The landlord insurance quote

Insurance companies do offer policies specifically designed to support landlords.

These are typically a little more expensive than owner-occupier policies but it’s perhaps worth keeping in mind that the protection they provide is different because of your different risk profile as outlined above.

As such, it is difficult to compare one form of cover against the other and thinking of landlords’ insurance as being more expensive may, in fact, be misleading.

There are specialist providers of buy to let insurance or landlords’ cover and they will be able to offer a range of solutions. Getting your landlord insurance quote sooner rather than later may be the first step towards improving your protection and giving yourself a little more peace of mind.

Tags: landlord insurance quote

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 8:12 am and is filed under Low cost landlord 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.