Short Term Home Insurance

When you think of insurance, you might generally think of an annual policy that continues to roll over from one year to the next.

But what about those times when the home you own is going to be left empty for only several months or so? You are unlikely to want the expense of annual cover for only that temporary cover, but of course you still want the unoccupied property to remain properly and fully protected against the risks and perils it faces.

The answer is likely to lie with short term home insurance.

Why do you need short term home insurance?

The home that you – or your tenants – live in on a more or less continuous basis is likely to be protected by standard home insurance or landlord insurance to safeguard it against a wide range of risks. Some of these might represent potentially very serious threats of loss or damage, such as:

• fire, earthquakes and explosions;
• storm damage;
• flooding;
• subsidence (if this element of cover is required);
• impacts;
• vandalism and theft.

When it is unoccupied, your home continues to be exposed to just the same range of risks and perils, but additional ones too:

• an empty property invariably acts as a magnet for the unwanted attentions of squatters and other intruders, arsonists and vandals;
• when there is no one permanently at home to spot the need for minor repairs or maintenance, these problems might rapidly escalate into full-blown crisis – with the attendant damage to or even loss of the entire property.

Because of these heightened risks, many insurers regard the cover that normally protects your home to have lapsed or for it to become severely curtailed once it has been unoccupied for longer than 30-45 consecutive days – different insurers have different definitions of the precise period.

Short term home insurance is designed to step in and fill that gap by restoring the protection your unoccupied home needs.

What you need to know when buying cover

You need to know from what date your home is going to be empty, of course, since that determines the start of your short term insurance. It might be for a month or so, or it might be longer, but many policies are sufficiently flexible to allow any extension of cover that may become necessary if plans change.

You also need to know just what risks and perils are covered by your short term home insurance – and, just as crucially, what might be excluded. Policies such as this are typically available to provide only basic cover, whilst more comprehensive protection also remains an option.

Why choose us?

At UKinsuranceNET we have the expertise and experience to help you identify the cover you may need in the short term whilst your home is empty and unoccupied.

Approaching those needs with the flexibility and security you are likely to want during any such period.