Switching to Landlord insurance when?

Helgaw99

Hi all, 
I would appreciate any advice.
We are about to switch our residential mortgage to a buy-to-let mortgage to enable us to buy a new property to live in. A rent-to-buy situation. 
My query is around insurance, currently we have normal buildings insurance. We don't plan to have any tenants in the house immediately as we fix it up and potentially might want to make a claim on our current insurance. Can we leave our current insurance in place and only switch to landlord insurance once we are ready to rent the whole place out? We might have a lodger for a time on a lodger contract in the interim. 
Also- once the buy to let is in place, is there anything to say we have to rent it out? If we wanted to leave it empty for 6 months, or potentially just have a lodger or two- can we do that? 
Thanks in advance.

Carrot007

Don't change to BTL until you are letting.

If it's BTL you cant live there and can't have a lodger as you don't live there. (you get a lodger and you will find they have a lot more rights than you think as they are not a lodger).

Sandtree

If you want to maintain your current home insurance on it then you will need to make changes in the declarations of when you are in the property (as you wont be living there) and can expect a premium change as a consequence.  You also need to be clear on the terms of the unoccupied and any actions you must take.

You could get landlords insurance at the same time as switching the mortgage as long as you have moved out by then. Again you need to double check the clauses on the property being vacant.  Coincidentally I was just looking at a Landlords insurance claim for £35,000 for escape of water but the claim was declined as the property had been vacant for months and the policy required the water to be turned off and the systems drained which the PH hadn't done and a pipe had frozen and cracked in the loft.

I'm not sure if you can have a "lodger" in a building that is solely occupied by them

emilyjane92

Once you move out of your current house, it is effectively no longer your permanent residence (even though you will be in and out renovating the place). This will potentially make your current home insurance invalid so you would need to get a new policy then. I know when I first got my landlord insurance is was empty before I found a tenant and my insurance company gave me cover for the empty property for a few months while I found a tenant and then it carried over to a normal landlords policy. I have no idea how the lodger thing works though, sorry.