by Christopher Browne

Imagine your anguish if you came back from holiday to find your new buy-to-let had been ransacked by burglars. The real victims, however, would be the tenants, for it is their CD/DVDs, computers, TVs and gadgets that will have been stolen, not your dull-but-worthy fixtures and fittings.

However upset and shaken they may be, your tenants could well be buoyed by the thought that they will be able to replace their missing items on some sort of landlord's insurance policy. But they would be wrong, completely and utterly wrong.

For it is the tenants who are responsible for insuring their personal possessions not the landlord. In their eagerness to sign up to new agreements, draft inventories and sort out deposits, too many tenants suffer serious memory lapses and forget to do anything about insuring their goods and chattles.

Landlords often forget to insure their own contents too. Why? Because very few brokers and IFAs tell them about it. Even though every time an investor like you or I purchases a buy-to-let we sign up to a buildings insurance policy, we invariably overlook key internal items like carpets, curtains, Venetian blinds and kitchen white goods.