To ‘Let’ or not to ‘Let’ – that is the question
I recently inherited my parent’s house after my mother died. I contacted her insurers to see whether it was currently insured. It turned out that the insurance was not valid as currently the property was left empty. They told me that I would need Unoccupied Property Insurance and that unfortunately they didn’t cover unoccupied properties.
I was advised to go to the British Insurance Brokers Association, who would find me a specialist broker that could insure the property. When I called them they put me straight in touch with a very helpful broker who managed to insure the unoccupied property. I am very grateful to the British Insurance Brokers Association and the broker that helped me.
I now had to decide what I want to do with the property. I didn’t need the house, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to sell it either as it had been where I grew up. When discussing the insurance with my broker, he mentioned that he insured quite a few landlords, so I decided to ask him about let properties. He said that once I had a tenant, I would need to insure the property as a let property and I would need Landlords Insurance. He took me though a quote as an example and I was pleased to see that it was not as much as I had thought it would be – even better still, it was less that my Unoccupied Property Insurance.
Really it was a no brainer, so I started my search and luckily my insurance broker had a few contacts at local letting agents. I decided to give them a call and told them my insurance broker had recommended them.
With in ‘no time’ they were showing tenants round my parent’s house and we settled on a nice young family. This suited me down to the ground as the house was being used for a family again. I was delighted and went back to my broker to sort out my Landlords or Property Owners (as it’s known in the industry) Insurance policy.
The family have been in there for 5 months now and we’re quite good friends. I am glad really as I didn’t want the stress of having difficult tenants and, ‘touch wood’, we having had any problems and haven’t had to make a claim on my Landlords Insurance. I am very grateful to my broker who made the difficult decision of whether to let out my property quite easy and has started to do my other insurances. I really believe that if you can get a good broker, life becomes that little bit easier.
