What insurance do I need as a landlord?

As a landlord, you generally need to have Buy to Let buildings insurance as a bare minimum (most mortgage lenders require you to have this). But, if you want to be well protected, for example if your tenants don’t pay, or content gets damaged, you’ll need some other types of cover too. 

Landlord policies to consider include:

– Buy to Let buildings insurance: covers you financially if the building needs to be fully or partially rebuilt.

– Buy to Let contents insurance: protects the contents of your property, including furniture and white goods. It’s definitely worth thinking about getting contents insurance if you rent out furnished properties.

– Property owner’s liability insurance: protects you if a tenant gets injured or becomes seriously ill because of a fault at your property, and decides to bring a legal claim against you.

– Rent guarantee insurance: covers you if tenants don’t pay rent, so you don’t lose out on your rental income.

– Home emergencies cover: covers you for a range of property emergencies – things like leaks, boiler breakdowns and break-ins.

There are lots of optional extras available when it comes to landlord insurance, too. These can give you even more robust cover if you feel you need it. For example, you might want to take out loss of rent cover, which protects you if your property becomes uninhabitable. This is different to rent guarantee cover, which is to protect you if tenants don’t pay rent.

Landlord insurance providers will usually offer comprehensive policies that can be tailored to your specific needs. So, instead of having lots of separate policies, you’ll have one overarching policy that includes a range of different covers. 

It’s down to the landlord of a property to pay for buildings insurance – never the tenant/s. Some landlords choose to pass this cost onto their tenants through their rent prices, though. 

You can definitely get landlord insurance to cover tenant damage, but it’s not guaranteed under all policies. Some providers offer ‘malicious damage caused by a tenant’ as an add-on rather than including it as standard, for example. So it’s definitely worth checking this before you buy.

Research by NimbleFins shows that the average cost of landlord buildings insurance in the UK is £170 per property per year. But the truth is, the cost of insurance for landlords varies massively depending on a range of different factors. For example, the type of property being insured, the location of the property, and the different types of cover taken out all affect the total cost of the insurance.

You do still need to get insurance designed for landlords if you want to protect your property – even if you’re renting to  family members. This is because conventional buildings and contents insurance won’t cover you for a rental property (no matter who it’s rented to). 

One thing to bear in mind, though, is that you might not feel the need to take out things like liability insurance if you’re renting to your family (as you probably don’t need to worry about them bringing a legal claim against you)!

You do need insurance specific to landlords if you’re renting out any part of your property, even if you live in it yourself. This is because your usual home insurance won’t be valid if you’ve got one or more tenants. 

Tip: you need to get permission from your mortgage lender to rent out any part of your property. And you need to make sure you’ve got a tenancy agreement in place, too, as landlord insurance providers will require you to have this.

The same rules apply around landlord insurance regardless of whether you’re letting a house or a flat. The only potential difference is that the flat might have a freeholder, who may have organised buildings insurance for the whole building. If this is the case, you’ll need to let them know you’re letting your flat. That way they can update the policy to make sure your flat’s covered. 

In a nutshell: if you’re letting a flat then, yes, you need insurance designed specifically for landlords to protect your property.