Landing yourself the right cover
MORE than two million Australians own an investment property but an alarmingly high number of landlords do not have the right insurance.
Figures by the Landlords’ Advisory Service found approximately 40 per cent of landlords do not have specialised landlord insurance and as a result many people could be underinsured or not properly insured. While the cost is a tax-deductible expense, Adelaide landlords Shaun McCarthy, 35, and his wife Laura, 34, said they wouldn’t go without it on their twobedroom townhouse investment on the Sunshine Coast.
“I certainly wouldn’t think about not having it because it protects against the chance of something going wrong in terms of loss of rent or tenants causing damage to the property,’’ he said.
“It’s a few hundred dollars a year and on top of that we are not paying an awful lot of money for something that could potentially be a big out-ofpocket expense if we didn’t have it.”
Landlord insurer Terri Scheer’s executive manager Carolyn Parrella said in many instances landlords have the wrong cover.
“A lot of time landlords have an insurance policy on their property but it won’t be a specific landlord’s policy, it might just be a normal home and contents policy,’’ she said.
“It may not cover them for the types of loss they suffer as a result of it being an investment property.”
She said this often happens when they move out of a home they have lived in for a while and urges landlords to review the cover they have every two years. She said loss of rent was the most common claim among their customers.
The Insurance Council of Australia’s spokesman Campbell Fuller said signing up to regular home and contents policies generally won’t cut it, so specific insurance tailored to the needs of landlords is best.
He also warned, “landlord insurance is not designed to cover short-term holiday rentals of the type typically promoted by online platforms.”