What no one tells you when you’re responsible for an empty house

When a loved one dies, asking for an unoccupancy extension on their home insurance and keeping an eye on their property is, understandably, the last thing on your mind.

Alongside the consistently higher UK death rate between December and March, winter months also present the highest risk to empty properties.

Most high-value home insurance policies will cover an empty property for 30 or 60 days as standard. But after that, you’ll need to apply for an unoccupancy extension to avoid invalidating your insurance. Some insurance policies will also include extra conditions like:

• Regular property visits
• Draining the central heating system
• Maintaining the central heating at a certain temperature

But surely an empty house will be fine for a few months?

It’s easy to assume that an empty house will be fine for a few months while the sale is going through. But here’s a story about what happened when Sam’s grandma died and a burst water pipe caused £120k worth of damage to her £1.2million property.

“My grandma lived in a beautiful, Victorian 4-storey house. When she died in the September, we let her insurers know and they applied terms to extend unoccupancy to 120 days. And thank goodness for that.

“There were some conditions attached – we had to drain the central heating system or set the heating to a specific temperature, and visit the property at least once a week to make sure everything was safe and functioning as it should be.

“One day in December, my parents were visiting the house and found water gushing like Niagara Falls from the loft. They were shocked – they’d been round 4 days earlier and everything had been fine.

“It turned out that a pipe had popped out of the water tank which was housed in the loft. We did what we could to dry out the property and contacted our broker and insurers who then appointed loss adjustors. By this point, the house had been sold, so after agreeing an insurance settlement of £120k, we got the buyer involved and deducted the amount from the sale price.

“If we hadn’t extended the unoccupancy clause on the insurance, we wouldn’t have been able to make a claim and we’d have lost £120k.”

Sam’s top tips

1. A video doorbell (for example Ring) is good for security but even better for proving you’ve been keeping an eye on an empty property.
2.  A smart meter is brilliant for being energy-efficient, but even better for showing gas consumption to prove you’ve been heating an empty property.
3.  Visit regularly and don’t assume that because a property was fine a few days ago, it’ll still be fine now. There were only four days between the two visits to my grandma’s house but in that short time, a burst pipe caused £120k of damage.

How to mitigate your losses after an escape of water

Loss adjustors aren’t always available immediately after an incident because in winter, lots of other people have similar issues at the same time. So, if you’ve experienced water damage due to an escape of water (the fancy insurance name for an unintentional water leak), it’s important to mitigate your own losses and act as if you’re uninsured.

Showing initiative and taking action to prevent further damage will show you’re doing everything you can to reduce the cost of your claim. Here are some things you can do while you’re waiting for a loss adjustor to investigate:

• Open windows to air wet rooms
• Use a dehumidifier to prevent mould and stop structures from weakening
• Log everything and take pictures (if you can get safe access)
• Try not to panic

Ask us about our high-value home insurance policies which all come with our free in-house claims service.

Email Rachael on Rachael.Bromham@macbeths.co.uk or call 0118 916 5480