Home insurance or house insurance is designed to protect your home and its contents. It can help with the cost of replacing or repairing damage or losses. Covered events will depend on your specific house insurance policy. But home insurance typically includes fires, storms, theft and floods. Coverage options include building insurance and contents insurance, which can be combined into one building and contents insurance policy.

There are some insurance providers in the UK that will only insure standard homes, while others might agree to insure non-standard properties but hike their premiums to reflect the higher insurance risk these homes can sometimes represent.

A home that is left unoccupied for a significant amount of time represents a higher insurance risk for insurers. Not only is the house an easier target for burglars, vandals and squatters, but there’s also a higher risk that the building or its contents might be damaged by rising damp, mould or burst water pipes when the house is left empty.

Insurance for landlords isn’t a single, standardised insurance product – it is specifically tailored to meet your needs as a buy-to-let property owner by bundling together different types of insurance in order to protect you from a range of ‘insurable risks’. In addition to insuring your building and the contents of the property that belong to you, landlord insurance policies can also cover you for damage to other people’s property or physical injuries for which you might be held liable.