As the days are shortening and we wind down towards the late autumn and winter, it’s traditionally a time when people start thinking about their property. If you’re in the process of searching for a new landlord insurance quote, the following tips may prove useful.

• Don’t forget the unoccupied property position. If your property stands unoccupied for more than 30 consecutive days, for whatever reason, then typically the insurance company may deem it to be an unoccupied property.

  That may typically invalidate your existing buy to let insurance cover unless your provider is also able to offer unoccupied property insurance – something that’s worth checking out as part of the landlord insurance quote process.

• Check any excess. Some insurers may expect you to pay more towards the cost of any future claim (i.e. an excess) than others. That may considerably change your perception of the cost-effectiveness of any buy to let quotation you receive.
• Look carefully at the contents cover. If your property is rented out in a fully furnished capacity, you may have a significant value tied up in terms of contents. Some policies may only offer market value replacement of those items whereas others may provide new-for-old restitution cover.
• Is subsidence covered? Some let property insurance policies no longer offer this cover as standard (the good news is that we do!), so never automatically assume that your policy includes this element of cover.
• Check the levels of third-party liability protection. If you’re unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a legal action from your tenants or a member of the public that has suffered injury or property damage as a result of your house, the resulting court awards may be very high if you lose.

  Being sure that you’re adequately covered to a substantial sum might be sensible.

• Think about lawyers. If you become involved in a legal issue arising out of an insured risk, your legal costs may be high – irrespective of the outcome. Some policies may cover proportions of this but others may not. It may be worthwhile checking on your landlord insurance quote to be sure.
• Don’t think you can ‘make do’ with owner-occupier home buildings and contents cover. You may find that your landlords insurance quote comes out at a higher sum than if the property was owner-occupied. That’s because it is covering a higher risk profile.

  Owner-occupier cover will never be suitable for landlords buy to let purposes and insurance companies do have methods of checking the occupancy position of your property in the event of a claim. Have the wrong cover and your claim may be refused – it is simply not worth taking the risk.

If you keep some of these things in mind, it may help you to evaluate that landlord insurance quote a little more critically.