Landlords Liability Insurance

Landlords liability insurance

As a landlord, your liabilities may be greater than you think and that’s why landlords liability insurance should be given serious consideration.

The moment you rent out a property, whether it is for commercial or residential purposes, by law you will have certain liabilities with respect to it and the people using it.

There are many possible ways in which your liability could be called to account. If one of your tenants trips over a badly maintained floorboard and injures themselves, they may have a legal right to claim against you as their landlord responsible for the maintenance of the property. If they electrocute themselves on a faulty fitting or electrical item due to poor or degraded wiring, then once again you could find yourself at the receiving end of a hefty claim. The list of possible risks could go on almost indefinitely.

It doesn’t end with tenants. You may be equally liable for such injuries to people visiting your tenants. If your property is commercial, your risks and need for landlords liability insurance is even greater. If the property has members of the public using it then the possibilities of accidents increase dramatically.

Finally, you may also have consequential liabilities. If a tree in the garden of your property gets blown over and damages an adjoining house then you should expect some interesting debates on the subject with the neighbours concerned.

Professional obligations

It’s worth remembering that the law makes no allowance for the freakishness of the accident or any ignorance of the "I didn’t know it was broken” sort on the part of the landlord. In a serious case a court may well give the benefit of the doubt to the claimant and there will always be the suspicion that an accident happened because the landlord had not been meeting their professional obligations around maintenance etc. Court awards to seriously injured parties can easily run into high six figure sums. If you do not have appropriate landlords insurance in place this could be financially ruinous.

There is also a misconception that the landlord can reduce their liabilities by inserting clauses into the rental agreement or insisting that the tenants take out their own insurance. This is completely mistaken. Apart from insurance for their personal property (and even in that case you may still have some legal liabilities), no insurance of the tenants can remove your own legal liabilities arising as a result of your being a landlord.

The risks here cannot be underestimated and putting into place effective insurance to cover them for you requires specialist knowledge and advice. There are specialist providers of landlords liability insurance that can do exactly that for you. It may well be worth giving them a call or contacting them through the Internet.