Residential landlord insurance pitfalls

The common pitfall for residential landlords insurance would be changing your tenants. I think this is a major pitfall for landlords using residential landlord insurance.

Statistics show that professional tenants have fewer claims than maybe the likes of DSS tenants.

A common pitfall would be if you’re midterm on a policy, and you change the tenant, your insurer has given you a premium calculator for a professional tenant, and then all of a sudden, you change your tenant type to a DSS tenant.

There’s no issue with that, it’s just that some insurers do not accept DSS tenants.

What you should do is always check with your insurer, always ring up your broker first say,

“Look, I’m getting a new tenant type. Do you agree with this type of tenant or is this allowed with this particular insurer?”

And at that stage, they can say yes or no.

Obviously, if it’s a no, you don’t take in a DSS tenant, you have to go and find yourself a professional one because let’s say, if you have a fire, and you’ve changed a tenant type without checking with your broker.