Landlord Insurance For Housing Association Tenants
Many people tend to question whether or not they can get a Landlord Insurance Policy
that will cover their property if they were to rent it out to people who are Housing Association Tenants, or if they can whether or not it will cover them for all of the things that it would if they had a professional or working tenant in the property instead.
There are two types of Housing Association Tenants, the first is plain DSS Tenants that have a lease agreement between the landlord and themselves and the second is DSS Tenants that have the lease agreement between the landlord and the housing association and which type of tenants you have will affect how easy it is to get Landlords Insurance and how expensive it may be.
There is a simple reason for the large difference between the two types of DSS Tenants and it is mainly because if they are DSS Tenants with a lease agreement between the tenants and the landlord it means that the landlord gets to fully check them over before they move in whereas if it is direct with the housing association then the landlord has no say in who goes in to the property as the agreement is that the housing association will find a tenant and put them in there.
The thing that you have to remember with DSS Tenants being in a landlord property is that they are rated highly compared to if someone was either retired or working, this is simply because it is seen that because they are on benefits they will be less likely to look after the property as well as others because if they do anything wrong then they could just move whereas someone that was working for example would need to look after their property because they would be working and would need to live close to the work place.
A few years ago DSS Tenants were regularly sought after by landlords simply because there rent was usually paid direct by the council to the landlord but lately that has changed with the council paying the tenants directly. This has stopped lately with more things being added by insurers which makes it less attractive to take a DSS Tenant over a working person for example there are certain insurers that will make you pay a higher excess for any claims you may have with a benefits tenants.
You do have to remember that if the tenant is working but also receives a top up of benefits to add to their wages (for example if they were to work part time) then you would have to ask each insurer individually whether they would be classed as a working tenant or a tenant that was on DSS Benefits.