Landlord insurance policy panic

[OneLoudTiger]

Hi all - I’m having a small panic re landlords insurance and not sure where the best place to post is!

I bought a rental property recently and it has been unoccupied while we did small works (redecorating etc) but everything has taken much much longer than I anticipated. Took out landlord insurance through a broker website.

I signed up with an estate agent and they asked for a copy of my insurance policy - which reminded me that I needed to tell the insurer the property was going to be empty for longer than they allowed for - or so I thought!

On speaking to the broker website today, they told me that I had declared the property was occupied when I took out the insurance, so now they have to make a referral to the insurer to make sure they can insure the unoccupied property and if not they will cancel the insurance(!).

So now I’m very stressed that the policy could be cancelled and I could end up with a black mark. Has anyone insured an empty rental property before, I didn’t think it would be that uncommon but maybe it is? What should I have done instead?

Also, should I send the estate agent a copy of the existing insurance policy knowing that it might change, or hold off until the broker website come back to me. The estate agent has a prospective tenant already but can’t do any paperwork until I’ve sent all my paperwork over. 😥

What you should have done- when it's unoccupied from the start you need to tell them it's unoccupied first off. And it needs to be rated as unoccupied from the off.

Secondly if it's with a company and an underwriter that covers unoccupied properties, then you'll most likely be fine and they'll just do a change to reflect it's unoccupied at the minute.

If that company or underwriter doesn't cover unoccupied properties then they'll cancel it yes.

I would send the details to the estate agent and perhaps explain that you're getting it changed to unoccupied

Yes if the underwriter ends up cancelling then yes you will have to declare it in the future

Cancel the policy before they have the chance to cancel it. If you let them cancel it then you will pay through the nose for insurance the rest of your life.

Insurance in the future that you can get for people who have had policies cancelled is not necessarily expensive.

But if they've referred it to the underwriters there might be good chance they can just do a change rather than cancelling

It’s 100% on me and the end of the day but I thought I had told them it was unoccupied from the online questions. Perhaps I should have gone with the old fashioned actual person broker.

Oh well it's done now these things happen

I thought about that but then what policy should I take out if I’m hoping to have tenants in within the next 2-4 weeks, just a normal landlord policy? That feels shady somehow 😅