Landlord Rent Insurance

Landlord rent insurance

A major disaster like a flood or fire to property can be heartbreaking and have considerable financial impact at the same time. Not only could you have to oversee the rebuilding of an investment from the ground up again, you are likely to lose out on rent for a considerable amount of time. Even something like a flood can put a property out of action for months, meaning no one can live there and therefore again you are losing rent. But landlord rent insurance can help guarantee that even in the event of such a catastrophe, you would still get a rent income equivalent for a set period.

Available as part of many simple landlord insurance policies, a rent insurance element simply pays you an equivalent amount of rent per month that you have lost while the property is out of action. This continues for a set period which is defined when you take out the policy. Some insurance companies allow you to specify how long you would get the replacement rent for after a successful claim, perhaps six months or 12 months, for example. Naturally, the longer you would expect the replacement rent to arrive, the more expensive the landlord rent insurance premium is likely to be.

How much cover?

You can often also insure a considerable amount of rent, up to an insurance company's maximum. This can be of interest to commercial property owners, as there is no point in taking out a policy which is cheaper but which only covers a fraction of the rent you would lose if the property was being repaired for a long time. So an insurance policy may pay up to £1,500 per month in lost rent, when the building which is out of action was providing you with £4,000 a month rent.

Protection like this may also be charged either per property with a certain maximum number of tenants, or it may be charged per tenant. Other common attachments to this kind of policy may include something like a free advice line and access to expert legal assistance.

Landlord rent insurance is therefore a part of a policy which can give you something to fall back on in the event the worst happens and a property is wrecked and taken off the market for an extended period, which can mean a double-edged blow of a huge repair bill and thousands in lost rent if you don't have the right cover.