What would you have done?
I received a phone call at 8am on a Sunday morning from our out of hours contractor advising me that he was with fire fighters at a property that we manage; a fire had broken out during the night and they were still damping down. I immediately drove to the office to collect keys and files and met him at the property.
It transpired that one of the tenants had left a candle burning when they had gone to bed; the candle then slipped off a table and into a wastepaper basket. The fire alarms alerted the tenants and luckily only the bedroom where the fire started was destroyed along with the bathroom adjoining it; however, all the other rooms upstairs suffered severe smoke damage, in addition the whole house was seriously water damaged – basically the house was unliveable.
The house was home to 4 separate tenants in total, each of whom needed to be rehoused immediately.
Unfortunately, the Landlord had not taken our Specialist Landlords Building Insurance – he claimed he could arrange insurance much cheaper elsewhere – meaning that I could not contact the insurance company on his behalf due to financial conduct regulations; just to add to my problems the Landlord resided overseas in a totally different time zone.
Until I could speak to him, I couldn’t arrange alternative hotel accommodation – his insurance didn’t cover his tenants – he had to call the hotel himself and pay for their rooms before I could arrange to move them. As the responsibility fell to him, he had to cover the full cost of the tenants’ extended hotel stay whilst the house was completely dried out, redecorated and refurnished.
If the landlord had our Specialist Landlords Buildings Insurance, I could have booked the tenants into a hotel immediately, notified the insurer of the claim and the full costs of the tenants relocation would have been covered.
In conclusion, I organised the hotel for the tenants, organised the payment from the landlord to cover the hotel costs and met the landlord’s insurance loss adjuster at the property. I then went on to organise quotes and oversee the refurbishment works of the property including re-furnishing.
Could you do this?
Would you know where to start?
Would your agent do this?
Perhaps it is time to check your insurance policy and see what you are actually covered for – you must be covered on the basis of a let property in order to protect both your and your tenant’s liabilities.
Where would you have been at 8am on a Sunday?
Would you have been able to drop everything and meet the fire fighters?
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