Landlords Insurance and Responsibilities

Suby67

Hi there...am hoping that someone may be able to advise me about Landlords Insurance.
I am the owner and Leaseholder of a Ground Floor Apartment and is our home. The one above us is a Rental and is currently unoccupied (previous tenant left a fortnight ago) the Landlord uses a Property Management Company as his Letting Agents.
Last Thursday morning at 7.30ish my hubby went to the loo and came running back into our room to say there was water pouring through the ceiling in the bathroom. It was more of a waterfall and was hot stinking water. I rang the fire brigade who refused to attend as unoccupied. I then rang the out of hours number for the Management Company who sent out a plumber. He turned the water off at the mains from the road. Fast forward to today and the Loss Adjuster for the Freeholder came,have agreed to carry out necessary works and repair and replace everything that was damaged,that's the good news. The bad news is that they say that I have to pay the £300.00 Excess!!! Okay experts...how can this be correct? Surely as the leak...hot water pipe that burst in upstairs apartment came through and damage my property be my responsibility for paying the Excess? Would it not be that of the Landlord? Would his Landlords Insurance not cover this? Sorry for long first post but am at my wits end 😩

Quentin

You will have agreed to this excess when taking out the agreement for insurance.

Your insurance will be used to pay claim for your damage.

Unless you can prove any negligence this is accidental damage

eddddy

Quentin wrote: »

You will have agreed to this excess when taking out the agreement for insurance.

Just a small qualification, it's a leasehold flat (the OP is the leaseholder) and it sounds like it's the Freeholder's Buildings Insurance policy that the OP is talking about:

Suby67 wrote: »

Loss Adjuster for the Freeholder came,have agreed to carry out necessary works and repair and replace everything that was damaged,that's the good news.

If you think the freeholder acted 'unreasonably' by choosing a policy with a £300 excess, you could claim against the freeholder. But TBH, I think a Tribunal would say that a £300 excess is reasonable.

Were any of your contents damaged? Because they won't be covered by the freeholder's buildings policy. If you're claiming on your own contents policy, you may have another excess to pay.

As Quentin says, you can only claim damages (including the excess) from somebody else (e.g. your neighbour), if you can show that they were negligent.

eddddy

... although, another thought. The excess should be per claim, not per flat. (The freeholder will be making one claim for all damage to the building.)

Were other flats damaged? If so, I'd guess that the excess should be shared. Is £300 the whole excess, or just your share of it?

Suby67

The Buildings Insurance is built into the Service Charge paid annually by all Leaseholders me included. The only Insurance I was informed I needed to take out was my Contents insurance. My insurance company for my contents say that the Buildings insurance for which I pay the Service Charge in which that is included should be paying for the repairs.

Quentin

Is the excess mentioned in the service charge agreement?


If you weren't made aware of any excess then you have grounds for not paying it!!

Suby67

Funnily enough no mention ��

eddddy

Quentin wrote: »

Is the excess mentioned in the service charge agreement?

If you weren't made aware of any excess then you have grounds for not paying it!!

Where are you getting that info from? It's completely incorrect.

There's huge amounts of legislation about this.

The law is that, as long as the freeholder's insurance policy meets the recommendations of the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a leaseholder has no basis for challenging it.

And the law is that all service charges and their allocation must be reasonable.


So it sounds like the only basis the OP has for challenging the £300 charge, is that the allocation amongst the flats is unreasonable.