Unoccupied Property Insurance

Getting insurance for an vacant property can be quite a headache as it is often the case that, a lot of banks and major insurers tend to withdraw cover if your property has been empty for a few weeks or more, and when a quote is obtained the policy can be extremely basic or they want payment up front, or it just seems very expensive.

Unoccupied property insurance is very different from normal house insurance. A home is rarely used for anything more than an occupied private residence. This risk is very well understood and doesn’t tend to vary much. With vacant buildings insurance things are very different. Covers can be quite wide ranging depending on what you are intending to do with the property.

Policy Cover

Many empty property insurance policies are just FLEA cover or FLEE or FLEEA. This means cover is limited to purely Fire, Lightning, Earthquake, and Explosion or slight variations, which can include Aircraft collision. Sometimes property owner’s liability is included in this but not always. This is the most basic form of buildings cover there is. If any building works are going on at the property, it’s likely that you will only be offered this.

The more specialist companies will offer not only FLEA cover but higher levels of cover too, and some even offer cover similar to a household buildings policy, provided there are no major works in progress.

With such a difference in covers offered for empty buildings, it is very important to read the policy wording to double check what you are or are not covered for. As an example, a few covers may look the same as a home insurance policy, but theft may be excluded where others will include it.

Policy Terms

Most empty properties are only empty because they are between uses, e.g. a landlord is looking for a new tenant, or the property is up for sale. In view of this, most unoccupied property owners are only wanting short term cover, and in the example of a property for sale, possibly only a few days. Naturally, insurance companies are rather reluctant to offer such short term cover, so they often have quite high cancellation fees, or they will specify in their policy wordings that they will keep a minimum of half the annual premium upon early cancellation.

However, there are better options available. Some companies offer short term unoccupied insurance policies over periods of three, six and nine months, though there would be no refunds if you cancel one of these policies early. You may find these policies, although cheaper overall, are more expensive on a month to month price, compared with an annual policy.

There are some rare exceptions, who will accept payment by monthly instalments over 10 or 12 months, although you may have to search hard to find one of these. There is a broker, Quote-4.me.uk, who offer plenty of useful advice, and policies such as these on an interest free basis, and this seems to be the best bet for insurance for unoccupied property.