Landlord's home buildings insurance - can you recommend?

[maggiethecat]

Am shopping around - thanks.

we're with VASEK.

We are with Copeland.

will look them up - thank you

With CIA (the insurance company that is..lol)

I use Endersleigh

Alan Boswell, always found them very helpful and more than reasonably priced.

Aviva. Most competitive with malicious damage cover added.

Malicious damage, hmm curious about such a risk - never thought about it.

We're with Lloyds, just moved from Morethan and Lloyds were very competitive.

If a tenants trashes the place you won't be covered unless it is either added to a standard policy or comes as standard. I learnt the hard way.

I can second that gregs, any damage caused while the tenant has legal access to the property is not covered . Be careful, read the small print. My house is trashed, seriously trashed I have a specialist damage repair company in at the moment who have stripped the house down to the joists and are drying it out before putting everything back in, and I'm, talking walls, floors, central heating, electrics new kitchen and bathroom, and all out of my own pocket.

You might also want to look into loss of rent etc and pay extra for legal cover. I started trying to evict my tenant in May 2010, she left in Oct 2011. My legal bills were £5000 (and thats with some good discounts). I have had no rent since Nov 2011, and putting the house back together is going to cost me well over £10,000 (thats with us doing a lot and calling in every favour going!).

I will never go for the cheapest policy again, it is worth speaking to a proper advisor and double check what is covered!

Sorry that doesn't answer your OP but its very raw at the moment and I would hate for anyone else to get screwed over like me!

EMS, I'm with Morethan and am looking to move - thought they would have tried a bit harder seeing as I moved my car insurance from them a few months ago!

Some quotes have incl loss of rent which I want to have, will consider legal cover too. Pretty sure that quotes so far only cover damage due to forced entry - will read fine print and try to sort out malicious damage as well.

Def will not go for cheapest.

Sorry to hear of your woe Oreo, it makes me feel ill thinking about what you must be going through.

Why did it take almost a year and a half to evict her? Did you have an AST in place?

Hopefully she is of some means that you can bring claim against her!

She appointed a legal aid solicitor, and they just dragged everything out, then she just refused to leave! So then you have to wait for a court order and eviction which is one of those piece of string jobs. So at long last a date for eviction was set by the court and she buggers off the day before it.

So now I have 2 choices, pay someone to track her down then take her to court again for the damage and rent arreas, which will have a starting cost of £1000 legal fee and will escalate to God knows where. And the likely outcome is she won't pay what the court orders and so I will have to take her back etc all the while costing more money than I recoup.

Or I appoint a debt collection agency to hound it out of her IF I can find out where she is! They would take a cut of the amount recovered.

Either way not very possitive options. So for the sake of my sanity and my withered purse I have cut my losses. Completely cleaned out everything DP and I had saved, borrowed money from my Aunt and we are just trying to get the house up and re let asap.

I also informed the housing benefit dept of her rent arreas, and the whole sorry saga, and do you know what they said.

We still pay her because that agreement is between us and her, and the rent is an agreement between you and her???

So despite the fact that she has thousands of pounds of rent arreas they will continue to pay her HB. Not their propblem if she doesn't spend it on her rent.

Grrr and breathe!

This is a very extreme scenario, I don't want to alarm you! But had I had a better policy alot of this money would have been covered by that. I've been renting this house out for nearly 10 years and this is my first real problem

Oh and yes an AST, and I'm an accreditied LL and I should know better how not to end up like this

Sorry to hear. I know what you mean about preserving your sanity.

I was inclined to penny pinch with the insurance in terms of getting just basic cover from a decent insurer but I am now making sure that malicious damage is covered (a bit sad isn't it?). Brit is offering such cover with legals at a very good price. I think I might run it through the NLA as I am a member but doubt they can better Brit's offer.

I'll think positive thoughts for you as you try to restore your house.

Thanks it will soon be over and can be written off to experience!

I would ask for a copy of the policy booklet from whoever you decide to go with and read it (often available online), then you can see where their non cover clauses are and assess for yourself what is a reasonable risk.