home insurance when you have a lodger

katejo

I have found that many insurers will not cover you for home insurance if you have a single lodger. They make no distinction between a professional landlord who lets many rooms and someone who just lets one room in their house for a bit of extra cash. They want you to pay for specialist landlord insurance. Aviva, Direct Line and Nationwide are ok but many others are not eg. M & S insurance, Sainsbury's and First Direct. However I have always made my enquiries to these firms before actually having a policy with them. I wonder whether they respond differently if a current policy holder takes in a lodger and contacts them to check whether their cover is still valid.
Has anyone tried this and succeeded?

InsideInsurance

Standard home insurance often will still cover you even with a lodger in the property, normally the only difference is over theft/ vandalism claims where there must be signs of forced or violent entry if you have non-family members living in the property.