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Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

Old Jan 3rd 2020, 8:41 am
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Default Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

Hi,
We will be renting our UK home whilst living in the USA - Any recommendations / advice on companies, things to watch for, problems etc?
Much appreciated!
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Old Jan 3rd 2020, 11:05 am
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Default Re: Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

Originally Posted by OldWindsor
Hi,
We will be renting our UK home whilst living in the USA - Any recommendations / advice on companies, things to watch for, problems etc?
Much appreciated!
Hi. We live in Australia and have two rental properties in NW England. The most important thing for me was finding a good managing agent to look after the properties. If you have a willing and dependable friend or family member, that's a good solution too but they/you must stay up to date with legislation governing all aspects of being a landlord - and there's a lot of legislation!

Something that's really helped me is gradually building up a really good team of tradespeople for those inevitable maintenance issues. A managing agent will usually have their own maintenance people, but I wasn't particularly happy with either the quality or the timeliness of the work. Luckily we renovated our own house while living in the UK, so got some great contacts that way. Having good tradies you can call on is like gold. Of course I leave the managing agent's maintenance department to deal with emergencies, they have a 24/7 number for tenants to call and anything impacting on tenant safety or well-being has to be dealt with immediately.

I've used Alan Boswell Insurance with no complaints, they're brokers but also offer some products in-house. On one occasion I got the same policy offered by Alan Boswell Insurance through Aviva Insurance at a cheaper price by going directly through Aviva, because we already insured own own property and vehicle with them, so worth checking around.

Finally, if you have a residential mortgage on the property you'll need to check your mortgage documents, as many lenders require you to switch to a buy-to-let mortgage. Best of luck.
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Old Jan 3rd 2020, 3:57 pm
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Default Re: Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

For insurance, direct line are pretty decent. Have online/app too and good prices.
I had to pay a small feee to change existing mortgage, as the house changed status from perm residence to rented.
Before you go (ideally) speak to some agents. Good communication is key. You’ll either want one that can handle maintenance etc for you or provide a basic service only and arrange the maintenance yourself, I have the latter setup currently.
Arranging work remotely can be a pain, esp. with time-zone differences and so on but really it’s just logistics. However I just arranged a brand new front door and window and it was all smooth and perfect, so really like always it pays to research and so on but you can do it all online and remote. Not that different to being there.
Finally, keep an eye on your tenants, inspections etc ideally, once you get a good one, hope they stay
The hardest part is correctly reporting all for taxes everywhere it needs to go, keep all your invoices, tally up expenses incurred as these can be offset against tax later.
watch out for tax issues like foreign currency capital gains, especially with the U.K. currency being so flakey and in decline. I switched remaining mortgage to interest only and make one-off reduction payments at optimal times to simply this for reporting and tax (and optimise potential liability) a lot.
hope that helps a bit.
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Old Jan 6th 2020, 6:39 pm
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Default Re: Landlord Insurance recommendations for UK house whilst in USA

We have rented our UK home for the last 2 years and it's pretty much been fine. We use Direct Line landlord insurance - we pay the maximum coverage but never had to claim on it - depends if you want the peace of mind.

The most valuable piece of advice I could give though is to get boiler/ water coverage. We have this with Home Energy Services and they have been called out 3 times for water/ boiler, etc. The management company deal with it (although one occasion they dropped the ball - to be expected I guess) - but it means we aren't ever going to get a sudden bill.

We also agreed with the bank that we would be letting out the house for only a few years and they gave us a consent to lease so the interest rate didn't change and we locked in for 3 years.
It really depends on how much risk you want to take and how much time you would have to deal with any issues. Our concern was the time difference and time spent on calls, etc so we just opted for an agent. Makes life such easier!
As the PP said though, as long as you keep all receipts - even if you pay for international phone add-on - then you can deduct when you do self assessment!
Good luck!
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