General Insurance
The cost of life assurance depends on two factors:
- How much cover do you want?
- How long you want it for?
Then you age, sex, occupation, health & smoking habits are taken into consideration. The other issue affecting premiums is your medical history & current state of health.
Mortgages
How much mortgage cover do I need & for how long?
You need to cover the amount of the outstanding debt, up until the debt is paid off.
What type of cover do I need?
Is your mortgage a repayment one? If so, you need a Decreasing Term Assurance policy.
Or is it an interest-Only mortgage, in this case you need a Level Term Assurance policy.
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No matter how well you reference check your tenants, problems can and will present themselves. Your tenant may lose their job, they may refuse to leave your property or they may just fail to pay the rent. All these problems are going to leave the Landlord seriously out of pocket and even more so when there is a mortgage on the property that still needs to be paid.
These problems and others can easily be protected against, simply by taking out a Legal Expenses and/or Rent Guarantee insurance. Whether you own one or one hundred properties, these policies provide extra peace of mind and shield you from the problems of unpaid rent or a bad tenant.
If you would like further details of the protections offered through such insurance schemes please do not hesitate to contact us.
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Becoming a landlord is a good way to both earn extra income and to achieve long term capital growth for your investment. However, you need to protect your investment and the best way to do this is by having the right insurance. You should ensure that your cover offers protection against a wide range of instances such as:
- Covered for malicious damage by tenants including unauthorised alterations
- Trace and access cover for leaks
- Accidental damage to fixed glass and sanitary ware
- Loss of rent cover
- Owners liability cover
- Legal expenses
If you have any questions with regards to how you are protecting your investment property please get in touch.
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Bedroom and post code based assessment of buildings insurances are often offered through on-line insurers. These type of policy offer a block policy which would cover similar properties in a particular area or post code. They can be fairly inflexible with a pre-defined maximum sum insured based upon bedroom number and location. However, the actual amount paid out on a claim would be subject to claims assessment should anything happen and it is the claims assessor’s opinion as to what your property is worth irrespective of the maximum sum insured quoted.
Insurance based on a rebuild or re-instatement value will allow a tailored policy reflecting an accurate amount of cover to be the defined sum insured and an annual premium calculated on that exact sum. Hopefully you do not therefore pay for any more insurance that you need and cover can be index linked so as to allow the tracking of house price increases. A more tailored policy can also allow for the inclusion of extensions and alterations to the property to be included, which could be missed on a one size fits all block policy.
So, in conclusion, bedroom rating can be cheaper and easier to put in place but on balance it may prove beneficial in the end to go down the stated sum insured route. Insurance, after all, is supposed to be about peace of mind.
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I was recently asked to meet a client in our Histon office. The clients had offered on a property, but unfortunately so had another two purchasers and they ended up losing out on the property. Obviously disappointed they decided to cancel my appointment but upon speaking to them I stressed the benefits of being fore-armed when going into competitive bidding situations and the meeting duly went ahead.
The clients were quite well prepared and had clearly done a lot of homework so they arrived with a handful of quotes and a brief for me to double check their research and to point them in the right direction. However, better than that I was able to source a much better deal suited to their personal circumstances from a small Building Society that did not appear on the comparison websites that my clients had checked.
The mortgage package that we beat was £1076 per month over 30 years. We were able to reduce the term to 25 years and reduce the cost to £918 per month. We were also able to reduce the cost of their Building and Contents by £14.86 per month, and their life protection was also reduced by £19.23 per month. In total a saving of just under £200 per month but more importantly the term of our selected deal was 5 years shorter, saving thousands in the longer-term.
A significant saving but more importantly it gave them the confidence to be more bullish when they found another property and I am pleased to confirm that they are now looking forward to moving into their new home. Simples.
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