In the first part of our guide, we took you through everything landlords need to know when they are renting out a property. Now, in the second part of our guide, we’ll take you through the different insurance options for landlords.
At AXA, our Landlord Insurance protects both your rental property and your rental income and covers your liability to tenants.
Types of Landlord Insurance
Buildings Only Insurance
Buildings only insurance includes cover for your house/building and permanent fixtures and fittings inside the home, including fitted wooden or laminated floor, fitted kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom units. This type of insurance would work for landlords who are renting out an unfurnished property.
Buildings and Contents Insurance
Buildings and contents insurance covers both your house/building and your furniture. This type of insurance is suitable if you are renting out a furnished house. It will ensure that any furniture that you have in the property is protected under your insurance cover.
What’s included in Landlord Buildings Insurance?
Landlord Buildings Insurance covers the physical property building against fire, storm, flood, water or oil escaping, theft and attempted theft, malicious acts and subsidence.
To help you understand what is included in Landlord Buildings Insurance, we have put together the following list:
In the event that your tenant breaches the law in regard to their lease agreement or the payment of their rent, your landlord insurance policy will cover advisors costs to pursue proceedings.
Where we are satisfied that the home cannot be lived in because of loss or damage by causes covered, we will pay the amount of rent you should have received but lost while the home was unfit to live in and the reasonable cost of similar alternative accommodation until the home is fit to live in again. The most we will pay is 20% of the buildings sum insured.
Accidental damage caused by your tenants will be covered. This includes things like if tiles are cracked or if a foot is put through the attic floor etc.
Up to €750 will be covered to replace the locks and keys in the event of keys being stolen from the home.
You will be covered for liability up to €3 million to cover tenants and visitors in the event of accidental injury to a person or damage to a property.
Our Emergency Home Assistance service covers you for certain home emergencies 24/7/365. In the event of an emergency, we will send someone to temporarily fix the problem until you can organise to get it fully fixed. Your tenants can get up to 4 callouts a year and this service does not impact your No Claims Discount.
If you need more information, you can see the full list of what’s included in different home insurance policies.
What is a cover limit?
When insuring a building you will be asked to give a cover limit. This is the amount it would cost to rebuild your home. It’s important to note that this isn’t the market value of your home, it is just the cost of rebuilding the physical building of your house, including its outbuilding and garages all of which are used only for domestic purposes.
What’s included in Landlord Contents Insurance?
It can be expensive to replace the contents of your home if they are stolen or damaged, so this is why we provide contents insurance for landlords to help protect their belongings.
We’ve compiled this list to help you understand what is included in Landlord Contents Insurance:
We will cover the contents of your rental property if they belong to you such as furniture, carpets, and other household goods.
In addition to this, we will also cover for loss or damage to contents on the land of your property, such as your garden furniture. We will cover up to €1,000.
Do I still need landlord insurance if the property I’m renting is unfurnished?
Yes, you can still benefit from a landlord insurance policy even if you are providing an unfurnished property. In these circumstances, we would recommend a Buildings Only policy in order to protect your building.