The recent spate of storms and challenging weather conditions across the country has made people reconsider the safety of their home, and how well protected they are in the event of an incident occurring.
Landlords will hold, or at least they should hold, insurance for the rental property, but this offers no protection to tenants. It is important that landlords impress on tenants the need for them to have contents insurance in place in the event of something occurring.
At David Harris & Co, we work closely with Finchley landlords, and we understand the importance of maintaining a good relationship between landlords and tenants.
While landlords are not responsible for insuring tenants’ items and belongings, there is no harm in discussing the matter with tenants. Problems can arise, for tenants and landlords if there is insufficient insurance at a rental property.
Many tenants are not insured
A survey conducted by YouGov for Paymentshield spoke to more than 1,800 adults, and the findings will be of interest to landlords. Some of the headline outcomes were:
· 23% of tenants have suffered a major incident which damaged their or their landlords’ belongings in the past year
· Only 46% of tenants have a contents insurance policy
· 93% of tenants said they would cover their loss themselves
With the annual contents of a property coming in at £25,126; this is a significant sum of money.
The study also looked at how tenants would pay to replace these items, with the findings being:
· 33% of tenants saying they would use their existing savings
· 31% of tenants say they would save money to cover the cost
· 18% of tenants say they would charge the cost to an overdraft or credit card
· 11% of tenants said they would look to borrow money from family or friends
There is often anxiety about the loss of belongings
Paymentshield’s Rana Ali said; “What these figures capture is the vulnerability of renters to financial disaster, either due to not being covered by a tenants’ contents insurance policy in the first place, or by not being aware of what exactly a policy covers them for and when policyholders are eligible for compensation. These worrying findings send a clear signal to the industry: almost the entire cohort of renters is highly exposed to financial loss, regardless of having insurance or not.”
An interesting point from the study was that more than one in three tenants admit to feeling anxious about losing their property and belongings due to issues such as theft or fire.
Rani Ali also said; “Despite relatively high levels of anxiety, many renters seem to falsely believe that nothing will ever actually damage their belongings. But detrimental events such as floods do happen, and, unfortunately, are becoming commonplace in the UK. Paying out of pocket to cover the cost of such damage could effectively wipe out people’s life savings. We call on insurers and every party within the lettings chain – from landlords to tenant referencing firms - to go further in raising awareness both with current and prospective tenants on the value of contents insurance and the conditions for making a claim.”
