House Insurance for Unoccupied House

If you own a home – and whether you do so as an owner occupier or as a landlord – you are almost certain to have house insurance. Standard building and contents cover typically offers protection against such potentially major threats as fire, floods, storm damage, impacts, vandalism and theft.

But when your house becomes unoccupied for any length of time, it may be a different story altogether.

Why do you need house insurance for an unoccupied house?

The story changes because your insurer is likely to take a quite different view of the risks to your unoccupied house compared to those when it is being lived in more or less continuously – by you or your tenants.

Such a different assessment is made of those risks, in fact, that many insurers strictly limit or end the cover provided by standard home insurance or landlord insurance once the property has become unoccupied for longer than between 30 or 60 consecutive days (the actual limitation varying from one insurer to another).

The additional risks taken into account may include the fact that:

Even on a well-maintained house a minor maintenance problem may turn into a major disaster is there is no one at home to report the incident and have it attended to in time; and

An empty home is widely recognised as an attraction for all manner of unwanted attentions – from vandals to arsonists, and squatters to fly-tippers – all of which may result in substantial damage to the house.

That is why your insurer is likely to reduce or remove cover against some of the most potent risks to your unoccupied house and why you need unoccupied house insurance to make up for that shortfall.

What you need to know when buying cover

How effectively does unoccupied house insurance replace the cover you currently enjoy whilst the property is occupied? This is likely to be your principal concern and, therefore what you need to know.

But there are other questions you might ask, such as:

• whether both building and contents insurance is covered;
• is malicious damage included as a standard risk;
• are the premiums you need to pay competitively priced;
• are there payment options which include interest free plans for paying by monthly instalments; and
• are you able to rely of the expertise and experience of the advice you receive from your broker?

Why choose us?

All of that leads to why you might want to choose us here at UKinsuranceNET.

We have built and continue to grow our business on the strengthen of the personal service we are able to offer to our customers.

This means understanding your particular, individual needs and circumstances, and tailoring an insurance policy to meet those needs – without running the risk of leaving you underinsured, and therefore without the wherewithal to put right losses or damage you suffer, or overinsurance, which involves your paying more than you might reasonably expect to pay for your unoccupied property insurance.

At UKinsuranceNET, our aim is to find for you the most appropriate insurance for your unoccupied house.