George Winters is a property owner. He has several rental properties around his home town, some of which are let to students as bed-sits and others to young professionals or junior academics at the local university. When his agent called to say one of the flats was broken into, he imagined that all he would have to do would be to replace the locks ...

... in fact, the situation was rather more challenging, as George was to discover. The first issue was that the property was not tenanted at the time (it had been empty for five weeks and the new tenant was not due in for a further two weeks). George was not sure whether his insurance would still be valid. He had heard that insurance companies reduce the scope of cover if premises are unoccupied for any length of time.

Fortunately, as he had used a professional insurance broker to arrange his landlords insurance, they had ensured that the cover remained fully in force for periods of up to 90 days (providing certain precautions are taken e.g. turning off the water), so he would be able to claim.

Landlords Contents

George was surprised, on arriving at the scene, to discover that the thieves had caused more damage than just breaking the lock. In fact, the limited amount of furniture that he had left in the flat, an almost new fridge and some tables and chairs, had been cleared out. In addition, the carpets had been badly torn during the removal of the fridge and needed to be replaced.