Buy to Let House Insurance

Buy to let house insurance

If you’ve purchased a house to rent out then without the correct form of buy to let house insurance you could quite literally end up seeing your capital investment go up in smoke.

In fact, a fire is only one of any number of disasters that could strike a property and you may be wondering why this is any different to similar risks for an ordinary house.

The problem is that once you start renting out your property, even if only casually for a few weeks each year as a holiday home, your entire property risk profile changes. That’s because you become open to a wide variety of risks that are higher for a rented property or that do not apply to an owner-occupied property.

To consider just a few of these:

• Tenant related.

Once you have tenants in your home, you are open to risks that would not apply to owner-occupiers. Theft or malicious damage to the building (including fixtures/fittings) or your contents, are all obvious points.

Perhaps less obvious but potentially very expensive are the risks of tenants or their visitors being injured on your property. You will be unlikely to be present in such circumstances and any injuries can easily be attributed to your property’s general level of maintenance.

Then of course there are the tenants who disappear leaving large levels of rent arrears.

You could try to deal with some of these issues through the traditional inventory and deposit system but these can prove to be notoriously unreliable and difficult to enforce. By contrast, all these risks can be covered quickly and efficiently through good buy to let house insurance - and it does not stop there.

• Property related.

There is a high probability that a rented property will stand empty for more of the year than one that’s owner-occupied. This may be due to gaps between rentals or periods of redecoration and renovation. Whatever the cause, property that is empty may often be at far higher risk of intrusion, vandalism and accidental damage due to things such as unnoticed leaks etc.

For all these reasons, to ensure that you have the appropriate buy to let buildings insurance, the insurance companies need to understand whether a property is owner-occupied or rented out. The normal buildings and contents insurance used by owner-occupiers is not only unsuitable for rented out properties but would automatically become invalid the moment a house becomes a commercial concern – i.e. under rental.

To check whether or not you have appropriate cover and to see what specialised policies are out there, you could contact a specialist provider of buy to let house insurance. They operate on the Internet and offer a range of products to suit all needs. It may be useful just to check out their offerings. It could reassure you that you are adequately covered or if not, it would allow you to decide what course of action to take.