Buy to Let Home Insurance Reviews

Buy to let house insurance (or Landlord Insurance) is a specialist insurance, very different from the cover you need in your own home. If you are a landlord learn how to chose the best policy for you and your properties.

Although not the money making machine it was before the 2007 recession, buy to let can still be a profitable business. Interest rates are low, house prices have fallen, but many Americans have difficulties raising the necessary capital to buy their own homes and banks are more reluctant to lend large sums. So there remains a high demand for rental properties and rents have not fallen.

The general economic climate does mean that it is especially important to find a good value insurance policy for your buy to rent properties. Being a landlord can be a very stressful occupation and having good insurance cover can help ease the burden.

Landlord Insurance

You will obviously already have building and contents insurance for your own home but insurance for buy to let properties is a very different beast. Landlord insurance is designed to apply specifically to someone who receives remuneration for providing residential accommodation.

Often a landlord will own multiple properties and you have less control over the occupants of your buildings. Although you can do a lot to insure your buildings are as secure as possible by fitting good security systems and fire prevention measures you are at the mercy of the behavior of people you don’t really know and have no direct  control over.

You can also insure against unique buy to rent problems such as loss of rental income, legal fees to evict troublesome tenants and the cost of re-housing tenants should your property become uninhabitable because of fire or flood.

How to Keep your Buy to Let Insurance Premiums Low

1. Make sure you have the correct ‘Buildings sum Insured’

House rebuild costs are generally lower than the property value and a common error is to give the value of the property as the sum insured, rather than the rebuild cost. This will result in a higher premium. A professional survey of the property is the best way to find out the rebuild cost you need to insure for.

2. Put all your houses on one policy.

Insuring your properties under one policy will make management easier, having one common renewal date, and you can negotiate a substantial discount with the insurer for multiple properties.

3. Add a Voluntary Excess to your policy

Adding a voluntary excess to your policy can produce substantial savings of up to 15% on the cost of the policy. Of course, you need to make sure you have the finances to cover this excess in the event of a claim. This will be in addition to any compulsory policy excess.

4. Get tenants with  professional occupations

The quality of your tenants will make a difference to your insurance company who may refuse insurance for students or the unemployed. Renting your property to professional people in full time employment will be looked upon favorably by your insurer and will reduce your premiums.

5. Fit intruder alarms on your properties

You can save another 10% off your premium by making sure you have good security on your properties.

How to Chose a Buy to Rent Insurance Policy

Once you have realized that buy to rent property insurance is a specialist insurance you can use the Internet to search for and compare providers. Be sure that you make the insurer aware that the cover is for buy to rent, as the risks are different.

Also be careful to choose a specialist insurer. Do not entertain ‘add-on’ landlord policies to household policies offered by banks or home insurers. These are usually not worth the paper they are printed on.

Don’t forget that YouTube is a massive search engine and many companies advertise their buy to rent  insurance policies there, explaining the difference between policies and the traps and pit-falls to look out for.

If you are unlucky and end up with a bad insurance policy, on which the company is reluctant to pay out for any damage at all, there are companies that will chase them for you and extract the money that is due to you. Unlike the claims adjusters employed by the insurance company these public claims adjusters work in the best interest of the client. You can avoid having to use these public claims adjusters by carefully choosing your buy to let insurance in the first place following the advice in this article.

---

What do you think ? let us know below...

Enter your thoughts about Buy to Let Home Insurance Reviews

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.

Copyright: This article is original and copyright protected and you may not reproduce this content in any manner without our express permission.