💰How to avoid common insurance mistakes that could cost you thousands ££££ with Josh Munt

Hello you fantastic lovely people and welcome to the Deal Finders Corner, your weekly property talk show brought to you by Property Filter, hosted by yours truly, Asif Omar from the Property Filter team. We are the UK's highest rated platform for finding deals and we're on a mission to empower our property investors and deal sourcer members to find 1000 deals this year thanks to the Property Filter blueprint. The purpose with your Deal Finders Corner is to give you more and the best of the available resources. Invite expert guests who will share with you the latest and most current strategies, tactics and secrets about what actually works right now in terms of finding and making deals and the reality of systemizing and running a high performance business in property. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce the rather amazing choice, Josh Munn on today's Deal Finders Corner. Josh is from Insurance Desk Services, an independent insurance broker with over 20 years experience specializing in all types of property cover, construction, professional indentity and commercial risk. Josh and his team have helped countless property investors navigate the complexity of insurance from JCT contracts to lender requirements and making sure their assets and profits are properly protected. In this episode we are going to learn several things. Number one, structure your renovation and property acquisitions correctly and avoid leaving gaps in your cover spot. Hidden pitfalls in property insurance so you never unknowingly are insured. Save money on your property insurance while securing the right level of protection. And of course there is an exclusive Q and A. So if you have any burning questions, please just put them in the chat box and we'll get it to the end. So as usual, can we give a massive, massive Property Filter welcome to Josh Mundt. Jazz hands everyone. Like we do every week. There we go. Welcome, Josh. How are we on this fine, fine day?

Fantastic. What an introduction. Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Are we well today? Excited.

All good? Yeah. I mean it's, it's obviously a talk that not a lot of people may think is the most sexiest of topics. So it's about obviously trying to highlight some key points because at the end of the day it's one of the most fundamental risk mitigating factors you can have. So hopefully I can give you some good tips to save some money and make sure you get those claims paid out.

Fantastic. Right, so we're going to make insurance sexy. Do you want to share your screen? Screen then. And it can go.

I never usually use sex insurance in the same sentence, but I will do my best. I'll keep it. I'll Keep it exciting to the very. At the very least, fantastic. The first, the.

The.

This topic of today is going to very much be revolved around property, hence why we're here with you guys at Property Filter. And one of the key parts of your property journey is right at the very beginning when you purchase the asset. So what is the first thing that many people do? They'll go through lots of different checklists and insurance will tend to be at the very end. So we use professionals, we get advice from all different fields, such as tax advisers, mortgage advisors, solicitors. So insurance shouldn't be any different. And like I've said, just there is one of the most fundamental support mechanisms when things go wrong. And it's easily gone wrong and it can easily not pay out. So there's some really important tips which I'll go through today. So when you first acquire a site, you should really be insuring it from exchange. So if you're buying an auction, if you're going through traditional methods, estate agents, then you should be looking to insure the property from exchange. That's when you have the insurable interest on that asset and you are potentially liable for any issues. The point of exchange, that's when you have the insurable interest on that asset. So that's when you need to be insuring it. So it's understanding what you're going to be doing with that site. So if it's land, then you want to potentially be looking at some land liability. You still have a liability for anybody that trespasses or is injured on your site. Still really low risk, but you have that insurable interest from the point you acquire the land. So that's. If you're going ground up, I appreciate many of you may not be, and you're coming straight in when you have an existing structure. So at the point of exchange, you want to be ensuring that building and then you want to be looking at the development from there. So this is how you structure your insurance program throughout the development. So if it's already tenanted, that's the most simplest form. You're going to go straight into a builder's insurance, landlord's cover and you know, you can buy off the shelf covers, they're all very much standard. So that would be your first point. If you are purchasing it with tenants in situ. If it's vacant possession and it's going to be a development project, you want to think about what is going to happen throughout that development. So the first thing is you're insuring that building and then from There, what's happening with the works? Are you appointing a main contractor? If you are, then you want to be looking at their covers, so you want to make sure that they're covered properly for the works. Or if you're not appointing the main contractor, many of you might be developers and you manage your own contract sites, or in that case you are acting as the main contractor. So, for example, if you're building an extension, you want to be insuring those works up until the point of practical completion, because the works don't form part of the building's insurance. So that's why the works are important to be covered separately from the existing structure. So if you have got development sites whereby you've got JCT contracts, that's where it can get quite in depth and a little bit tricky. But within that JCT contract it will stipulate how you need to structure your insurance program. So what I normally say is if you've got a vacant possession property, you insure it first for buildings, unless you are having a program to do the work straight away. But before that we would talk to you as a broker about what you're doing, what your plans are and how you would structure it. Because it might be that the contract works cover isn't needed to three months, six months down the line once planning's been obtained and granted. So that's what you need to think about. Once the work start, you want to look at the contract works cover. You also then need to think about your structural warranties. So structured warranties are usually 10 years. You can extend it to 12 and that is giving you cover for any structural or latent defects to the development, normally taking on new builds. So ground up development, once it's practically complete, you have that cover in place for the 10 to 12 year period and that is integral to selling a property. If you're going to sell a new build, the buyer solicitors will insist that there is a structural warranty. It's so important to get that done before you do any work to the foundations, because you can get it retrospectively, but it is very expensive and your pool of insurers is small. So it's really important to note to get structural warranties right at the very beginning before you do any work to the property. So it's worth thinking about that at the same point as when you're looking at your works and your contractor's insurance, if it's a conversion. So if it's just a internal refurb, you're not really going to need a Structural warranty, if it's residential, if it's a commercial to residential, but you're still not doing any new build element to might be that you can get away with a pcc, which is a professional consultancy certificate, and they are widely accepted and they're a lot cheaper. They're not a traditional insurance policy, but it's more a certificate to note that somebody has. A contractor has come out to say that it is structurally sound and the development has been done correctly. So they're worth considering as well. But again, you want to be looking at those prior to any works. So they're the key parts of structuring your program from purchase. Insure the property, think about how the work is going to be structured and who's insuring the works, structured warranties and that's them. They're. They're the key points. I've put some bits in here. I don't know how long we've got today. I don't want to go too much in depth on some really, really complex insurance case studies, but it's just good to highlight, like on this slide here, joint names. It's worth speaking with lenders when you are purchasing your asset to understand what they want to be insured. Because what can happen often is that you'll get to the last day before exchange solicitors are lendered, ask for a copy of your insurance certificate and they'll have lots of weird and wonderful requirements that you don't have. And they're quite hard to get, which will mean the insurance can't be approved, which pushes your purchase back and it could be a week, two weeks, three weeks, which is going to cause delays and that's going to cause lots of problems. So look out for joint names, co insured and first loss payee requirements from lenders. Now, they'll usually tell you way in advance of exchange what they want you to do on their insurance. If they don't, it's definitely worth asking them. So once you've got your lender, you've got your deal all agreed, you want to be asking them what they want you to insure it for. So it's good to be proactive on that rather than wait for them to ask for it right at the very end and cause compilation problems with the purchase and potentially delays. So I always say, when I do any slides, pictures, I'm very, very sorry about the pictures, they are so. They're so graphic, but it is the stark reality of when things go wrong. If cover isn't in place correctly, it can be devastating. You know, we're not talking about a few hundred pounds here and there, we can be talking about life changing sums of money that could wipe out decades of hard work and profits and building a massive portfolio just to not do something on the insurance for it to go wrong, to wipe it all out. So it is super, super important. This is an example of contract works. It's a case where the crane fell onto nearby houses and it just gives an example of different elements of what would be covered here. So you've got not only bodily injuries on site, which is public liability, you've got damage to the works, which would be a contract works cover, and then you've also got damage to existing structures. So there's lots of elements of COVID in there that you would need to think about. So if you just went and took a simple polish online without knowing what you're you're purchasing, it highlights the pitfalls where you could start to go wrong with, with your cover. I'll come back to that rent guarantee at the very end, if I can. So secondly, the other topic I really wanted to sort of highlight today is the pitfalls of insurance where you can go wrong. The hidden parts that you don't necessarily see or understand, where I can hopefully highlight to you to bring it to the forefront of your mind when arranging insurance so it's done correctly. If something happens, it pays out. That's the most important thing because we do find a lot that when claims get rejected, something hasn't been done along the way. So one of the key things that is often mistaken is the level of COVID So when I mentioned about the purchase of a property and when you exchange, you should ensure the existing structure. Depending on what you're doing, some insurers might start to restrict the COVID So if it's a development site or there's heavy development planned, they might start offering you this flea cover, which is very, very basic. It's fire, lightning, explosion, earthquake and aircraft damage. So within that there's not really too much chance of lightning, explosion, earthquake and aircraft in the uk. So it is very much like a fire policy. So if you're concerned or you're risk averse and you want wider protection, beware of those policies. And often you might not know, it will just be stated by way of endorsement. It will have a little note on the schedule to tell you that the COVID is restricted. So if you don't look for it, you might not know. So look in the endorsement section on schedules or who you're speaking to, arranging the Coverage as to what level is on. Because if you do want to cover wider range of events, you want to look at full perils. This is where the cost is vastly different. On a big development project, flea cover to full perils. There is a big difference, however, you're covering a lot, lot more for the wider perils. So things like malicious damage, flood, storm, theft and lots of sort of wider covers such as escape or water will be protected that you might want. And again, speak to your lender because it might be that they say you have to have flood cover, you have to have subsidence cover. So if they're demanding those and you need to look at those wider covers from the start, you don't want to present to them a policy which they turn around to only reject because the COVID is not wide enough to look out for full perils and those restricted peril covers. Flood massive, massive rising risk. The costs are rising. The percentage chance of a flood happening seems to be increasing across all areas of the uk. Areas that potentially might never have been vulnerable seem to be getting hit year, year on year. So to have flood cover you need to take one of those wider COVID policies. This also goes for occupied. So if you have an occupied insurance, so landlord's insurance covering you for an occupied property, still look out for flood exclusions because again, it's not potentially going to be highlighted to you in large font, it's going to be shouted about everywhere in your policy documents. It'll be quite the opposite. It will be hidden somewhere in the schedule. It will have a flood exclusion, it might have a little number next to the event flood excluded. So you want to be looking out for those flood exclusions because that is one event that could really cause lots and lots of damage. So an example would be you take restricted cover or you take a policy without flood cover, you can see claims 30, 40,000 and more. You can see that without having that cover instantly there's a 40,000, 50,000 pound shortfall that's coming off your bottom line. So it's really important to look at flood. If you are concerned that a flood exclusion will impact you. And probably the hottest topic right now in insurance it has been since COVID is rebuild values, it's continuing to be a problem. So there's a study for the 2024 figures on rebuild values and it shows that 77% of residential properties were underinsured, 77% underinsured, which is a crazy figure. And out of that 77%, the average of under insurance was about 48%. So nearly half of those underinsured. So of those uninsured, nearly half of the underinsurance is, let me try and rephrase that. Of those that are underinsured, then the underinsurance average is half. So if you're looking at rebuilds of 300,000, most will be insuring that for 150,000. So the impacts of that are vast. So insurers will look to apply what's called average. And that will mean that the percentage that you're underinsured they will deduct from any claim that you make. So this isn't just on total losses, this will be on any claim that you make. So if you have a flood claim, 50,000 and you're 30% underinsured, then they will deduct 30% from that 50,000 pound payout. It's really, really a big problem that is causing again, large sums of money to not be paid out. So the easiest way is to, for residential properties this is, is to look at the BCIS calculator. It's a free calculator that you could use online and it will give you a rough guide. It's pretty good, it's pretty accurate for standard properties and it will give you minimum, maximum and it will recommend somewhere in the middle. And that's widely recognized as the best way to get a guide on your rebuild value. If you want something that is fundamentally not going to be argued, it's got a Rick signature, then you can pay.

For online.

Evaluations and rebuild assessments. And if the property is very, very big or it's very, very unusual or maybe non standard, those free calculators won't work. So you may have to go and get a evaluation or professional rebuild survey on the property. So it's really important because again, like not having certain covers insured, this is another situation that could be potentially very, very dangerous and cost you large sums of money. So it's important to check your rebuild values. And a lot of people with rebuilds will ensure for the market value, others will just guess, others will be led by previous policies. So they might have got a copy of the seller's policy and then they've copied that value. So there's lots of ways that you can come to this value. But the rebuild is actually the cost to, after a total loss to take away all the debris, pay all the professional fees and then the costs of construction to put it back to the same condition. And insurers will tend to always go with, with Rick's valuations. And that's how they would look at determining what the true rebuild is on a total loss. So it's definitely, definitely worth to check these. And that also goes for any loss of rent. So if you've got loss of rent covers, many will just be limited to 12 months. You might want to look at 24 months or 36 months, especially for larger properties, grade listed, anything whereby there's going to be a long investigation and potentially a lot more professional work into rebuilding if you have insurance for loss of rent. So loss of rent is where you have a tenanted property and you have cover for loss of rents. If the tenants go to a different property because the damage is too large, they leave, they break the tenancy. You will cover all that lost rent that you would have earned for that period whilst it's being redeveloped. And if you only have 12 months of COVID if the rebuild takes two years, then you again, you've lost out 12 months worth of potential rent cover from your policies. So with loss of rent, look at potentially 24 or 36 months if need be. So really, really, really important. It's example of average. We're just talking big sums of money and these are, I mean the examples here are for very generic residential properties. If we're talking big, big developments, big commercial developments, the sums and the percentages just skyrocket. So I can't stress enough how important it is. Another key pitfall is endorsements. This is probably again, one of the largest, if not the second behind rebuild values is that within a policy that you purchase, there are conditions and endorsements for things that you have to do as the owner. They might be in the endorsement section within a policy wording. So I always mention that. How many people would read a policy wording? You get your policy docs, there's loads of PDFs, the policy wording, you'd open it up and it's saying 95 pages. The chances of you going through them all is very, very slim. And actually you don't have to go through a lot of it because a lot of it will be generic parts of how the wording structured. But the key parts of the endorsements and conditions. If you could control F when you're finding on a PDF or your search bar, if you look at endorsements or type in conditions, there's generally a small section where you will have all the conditions that you need to abide by. And that's a good way of quick finding those requirements within a big policy wording document. And they could be things. So on a vacant property they could Be you have to inspect the property every 30 days, every two weeks, sometimes, sometimes every week. You could have security requirements, waste removal, you could have conditions around pipe lagging, electrical inspections. They can, depending on the insurer, be very small or very wide. But either way you must do what it's telling you to do. Otherwise they will be the first to say, look, we're not paying out. We're not potentially going to be paying out because you haven't done X, Y or Z. It's really important to find those endorsements or conditions. A good broker should highlight them, they should snippet them out and tell you them. There'll be a separate document with just those on or in the quote letters. But if you're going direct to insurers, then potentially they won't. You have to find them, so look out for those. Another one would be tenant types. The days off residential, single let, working tenants seem to be moving on steadily and more and more as we move into 2025 into 2026, the strategies are changing. There's lots of different ways to start making money from property. You must tell your insurer, please don't just take policies online where you put working tenant, if it's not a working tenant, if it's social housing, you know, make sure you're declaring to the insurer that it's let off to a supported living housing association who have a sublet commercial lease agreement to then let it to the end tenant type. And again, they might do lots of different vulnerable types of tenants. So all those things are really, really key to tell your insurer. Not just on day one, but if you switch to one of those midterm, that's completely changing the risk. So if you've got it as a working tenant, you change it to social housing. You don't tell your insurer, if that insurer doesn't cover social housing and you try to make a claim, they're not going to pay out at all and they'll cancel the port policy. It's really key to declare all those material facts about tenant types and there's lots of them. So just make sure you're open on there and declaring all material facts. The onus on a property policy is on you. You're recognized as a commercial client type, so there's lots more owners for you to be declaring things. And that could be something so simple. I mean, you could look at things such as HMOs whereby you might install a small cooking unit and some microwaves and a hob within the room, a Lot of standard HMO insurers might not like that. So if you don't declare it, it might not be a question that they ask, but if you don't declare it, potentially again, it's not going to pay out. So it's declaring all material facts that an underwriter would want to know or ought to know that, that you should be telling them, we've seen things such as flat roofs, you know, if it's higher than 50 flat roof, it might be an insurer that doesn't like that high percentage. So if you don't tell them there's a claim, they find out you have lots of, lots of problems and worst case scenario, they cancel it from inception because they wouldn't have wrote that contract and then they don't pay up the claim. So small things may seem small, but they can cause a big problem with the clinicians. And finally, really, it's about COVID A pitfall where claims don't pay out is because the COVID is not there. And just like the policy wording for looking for endorsements, there's also policy wordings with lots of different covers and there's lots of different providers and insurers out there. So it's trying to understand the covers that are necessary for you before you focus on the premium. Because I think it's all too easy to go, right, I'm going to get the cheapest quote. Or if you go onto a comparison site, you might go, I don't like the cheapest one, I might go for the second or the third. But how do we know what is actually within that policy if we're just going on price? And because there's so many variants, you really do want to start to understand or speak with your broker or research the key facts document, which is quite nice because it simplifies it into sort of one or two pages, what you're actually covered for. Because small things can often be excluded. Malicious damage by tenant is a key one on occupied residential property. And if it's included, it might only be capped at say 5,000. So if you've got a 20, 30 grand claim, there's a quick example of a big shortfall that's coming out of your pocket. All sorts of different covers. So it's making sure legal expenses. Is that something that you're requiring? Do you need help with repossession? What about rent guarantee? With the renters reform bill harder potentially to evict tenants, there might be a higher frequency of rent arrears. Is that important to you? If so, make sure. You're looking at adding that on first and then okay, I've got all my covers I want, then go and try and find the cheapest premium possible. So it is really important to think about the covers first. Terrorism more so for the larger properties or properties in certain postcodes. Potentially lenders are making you take this cover. It's not something that's generically standard on property insurance for buildings. It might have a terrorism exclusion. So if there's any event that is declared a terrorist act, then your policy will exclude it. Unless you have a separate terrorism cover. Normally you see this taken on bigger blocks of flats within those postcodes. London, Birmingham, Manchester, larger cities. If you are taking the COVID outside of those, it can be super cheap. You could be looking 20, 30 pounds for an extension on even quite large properties. For somewhere that is not really in a risky postcode, it's worth considering terrorism cover because that isn't a staple on your standard policy. I won't go too much into this but it's worth thinking about for everybody. Property investors, developers and all of you that have businesses that is outside property SME. Small medium enterprises are often being attacked every single day and they don't have the resources to protect themselves if there is a loss. So cyber is is just as important for as public liability. These days we're so reliant on technology and online services to trade also with data breaches and gdpr. It's really worth thinking about cyber insurance as an extension and then also yourselves. Directors, you've all got responsibilities, you've all got a duty of care and you all have to deliver a professional duty as a director of a business. If you fail in those you could be liable to regulatory bodies. Stakeholders, shareholders, clients could all look at pointing the finger at you directly and then they will bypass company policies. They'll be looking at making a claim because you are the director responsible. So you would look at directors liability and then finally on yourselves is you. A good question is who? What is the biggest asset in your life? Many people will say your business, your house, but actually most of the time it's you, you're the driving force. So what happens if you can't work? What happens if your business partner can't work and they're integral to your business. So you want to think about key man life protection. And if you're running limited companies you can look at relevant life which is a great way tax efficient way of providing that cover. And there was a study, I think I read that we're twice as likely to insure our pets than we are ourselves. Which is quite strange because when you think about it, we are the driving force for everything we do. So worth thinking about as the extra cover for your, your whole portfolio, not just your property, but everything that you, you do on the wider range. So finally then, money appreciate that insurance is one of those necessity purchases. You don't necessarily want to do it. It's not something you actually want to use, but it really is important. Sometimes you have to if you're forced to buy lenders on purchases. So it's a strange one, but it's, it's definitely something that I've said before. Premium is very, very important. We don't want to pay too much, but it's about the COVID first. And then when you start to look at money and how you can save money, there's various ways that you can actually do it. And for, for property, especially 1, 1 real good tip is portfolios. So if you've got multiple properties, we often see that clients will insure them separately throughout the year. So you say, for example, you have 10 properties and you'll have 10 renewal dates. The best way to save money there is to bulk them into one portfolio. So you have one policy, one renewal day, they're all insured under one bunch of instantly you'll save on fees, you'll save on any insurer fees or wholesale fees because you only have one instead of ten on that example. And then you just get better portfolio discounts. Insurers are more open to giving you better rates per property if they're getting more than if they're just getting in one. So definitely look at grouping your properties together. Another way is excesses. So with an excess, if you are someone that's a little bit more open to risk or someone that isn't going to claim for the small losses, you know, if there's an escape of water, it's £600, you've got a good network, you're going to get your contract team to come and fix it. What's the point of having £100 excess if you're not going to claim for anything below £1,000? So if, if that is, you then think about raising your excesses, putting a voluntary excess on there to maybe a thousand, you can keep going as high as 2 1/2, 10,000 in some cases. That's a really good tool to bring your premiums down and it's something that you're not going to claim for anyway. So it's definitely worth worth thinking about your Excesses and then understanding the COVID like I've mentioned, with all the different types of COVID that you can have, if you understand those, and equally you can strip them out. Because if you think about a certain cover that you're not concerned with, if it happens, then you do have a kitty to pay for those losses and again take them out, you're going to save money on your initial premiums. So it's another tool, if you understand what you're doing, to take out some of those covers if they're not for you, and then review covers regularly. We, we review lots of things such as gym memberships, phone contracts, all different types of subscriptions. We're always keeping up to date with them. Don't let your insurance just trickle along for three, four, five years. I mean, we as a broker, we do review the market each year. But if, if you're not with a broker or you're with a broker that maybe only has one insurer, they don't have a wider market reach. So how do you know that they're sourcing the best deals? So it's always worth looking at your covers every year, making sure you're happy with the covers, checking your rebuilds are still correct. All these things help with keeping your costs down. And most importantly, they help pay a claim when something happens. So to finalize them, really it's just about making sure the final message will be claims. The whole point of insurance is to pay out. So with claims that we will often see, and I appreciate the view of insurance and the market is probably as low down as maybe politicians, it's not the market with, you know, the, the, the highest reviews, let's put it that way. But I think a lot of the time is because it's not understood. So claims, yes, they insurers will look to potentially find things, but if it's something that should have been disclosed, then they're, you know, in their right to do that and they just to highlight things such as CCJs, previous bankruptcies, they will look for these things. They will look at your rebuild values, they'll look at your tenant types, are they the correct ones? And if it's fundamentally correct, they will not wriggle out of a claim, they will pay it. So that's why I reiterate, it's so important to get it right at the very start. You don't have this problem with insurance being a pain and it being stressful. The system will work. So that's it. I try to squeeze it into a bearable amount of time. We're here for, for any insurance related inquiries, whether it be construction, property, commercial, we're all ears. So you can get in touch by phone also via our website, we've got contact forms or you can find me on LinkedIn and send me DMS on LinkedIn. So hopefully there's some things in there that can help you with your next purchase or highlight something that you might not have insured at the moment. And if I can just save a few of you the pain of claims being declined and turning that around so they're paid, then I've done my job. So Q and A is happy to ask away and take it from there, really.

There we go. Fantastic. Thank you so much for that presentation. It was very in depth, I suppose. So in terms of questions, we're going to take some questions from the audience but I've got a question and he kind of touched on it and I think it's something that happens in the industry quite a lot. So let's say I am a rent to rent provider and I go up to a landlord and say, look, landlord, I can guarantee you rent for X amount of years. I can offer these services. Fantastic, that's absolutely brilliant. But what do I need to be aware of in terms of insurance? Because I think there's a lot of rent to rent operations out there that haven't actually looked insurance in terms of their landlord.

Yeah, and it works. That's a great question because it works both sides. So firstly for the landlord, are they telling their insurer that it's sublet? Because the insurer will define that as a sublet agreement. So you'll need to make sure they're happy that you've leased it to a rent to rent agent who then has the ability to rent it either as a hmo, do it as service, accommodation, holiday lets or go down the social support living route. So all those tenant types again need to be disclosed. So that's a really important onus on the landlord. The rent to rent has a separate liability as a company, they act as a management company, so they have lots of responsibilities, so they're providing that professional service. So that's the way they need to look at their professional indemnity, also public liability, so causing any property damage, bodily injury that they're negligent and liable for and then other insurance covers. If they have employees, they will need employees, liability cyber, like I mentioned, a really, really big one and lots of other sort of directors policies that we could structure. So they're would be separate, they wouldn't need to insure the building because they're not, they have no insurance interest in insuring that existing structure.

Okay, fantastic. Right, so a couple of more questions we've got is where can we find this BCIS calculator?

Best way is Google. So you just type in BCIS calculator and it should come up as the top one. We actually have that integrated into our website so it might be easy to go on insurance desk and there's tools you could look at the rebuild calculator. So that might be a better way of finding it because the bcis, I think they only give you four free goes at it. So I remember in the past we used to have to just set up loads of different email addresses if you're a portfolio landlord, just to try and review your portfolio. But if you use our website, there's no restriction on it. So you can go through and, and review your, your rebuilds and it will give you that same rough guide from minimum to maximum.

Brilliant. So talking about portfolios, we've got a question here. What would be estimated discount when grouping 10 properties vs individual policies?

Good question. Always the pricing question is like how much can you save me? Each one is different, but I don't want to be avoiding the question. I think a good, a good answer. If you have, I like using 10 as example as a nice easy round number. So you have 10 properties with a particular provider that charges you a 35 pound admin fee on every single one. Well instantly you've saved yourself 350 quid just by grouping them together it might be a little bit less because they have one fee. So that's instantly a saving even if they don't give you any portfolio discounts. But on the rate then you could be looking at the prices generate on property from rebuild values. So 200,000. Say it's £200. If it was 300,000 it would be £300. So if you look at rebuilds at that sort of 10, that pound per,200 equals 200, you could start to save 20, £30 per property. Again, it could be even bigger. If you're looking at 50 portfolio plus, then the rates can come right down per property. So that percentage is, is bigger in, in the way of premium. Right. Because there's more premium, there's more discount to be had. So I call a portfolio from two two upwards. It's the portfolio, there's two that's, there's more than one. That doesn't necessarily give you a massive discount. It might give you a small Discount on fees, but from five plus, definitely the rates start to come down. But it's also your time, your time's important. Right. Do you want to be doing the renewal process 10 times, five times a year or potentially missing one? Probably not. So also your time's valuable, so that's a good saving in itself and it's not really quantifiable, but it's a good saving, just your time alone.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And we've got another really good question here is what do you think of a guarantor insurance? Is this recommended because of the upcoming renters right bill? Is this mostly paid by the landlord.

Or the tenant, as in rent guarantee or. Sort of. Yeah, yeah. I think that question is more alluding to rent guarantee. Yeah, I mean with the reform bill it's going to be potentially harder to evict tenants, which prolongs that process of rent arrears. So it's always been a risk rent arrears. But even more so now you, you want to start thinking about rent guarantee. The rates are still pretty good. Pre covered they were as cheap as anything. After Covid, the market sort of went away completely and then two, three years it's come back and it's gone back to pretty much pre covered rates. So you can get prices of about, we will do it 110lbs88 for a single let and that covers you up to two and a half grand rent arrears per month. So I think for the smaller landlords those profits might be a little bit more important. There might not be sort of a bigger kitty to, to swallow some of the arrears. So you want to definitely look at rent guarantee. But also that comes with your legal. So it helps with the repossession, it also helps with disputes. So it's definitely worth it. Definitely worth it. I guess that was a question if it was about personal guarantee insurance and that's something completely different.

No, I think it was about the rent. So the next question we've got is, is there, is, is there a specific or recommended insurance to take out when signing up a purchase lease option?

Not anything exclusive. So if you've got lease options, then the insurable interest is still in the owner's name. So it still needs to be insured as the person who owns the property. If you have the right to rent it during that period before you enact the option, it could be, I don't know, a year, could be five years. Then the landlord's insurance needs to know that it's again in theory, sub let off, so you have control of who goes in there and then you would be looking at the rent arrears. If you are concerned about those renters, you will take a policy in your name to protect against the rent.

Brilliant. Okay, so final question from myself is how can you help our wonderful community members, which we've already kind of discussed and how can our wonderful community members help yourself?

Great question. I mean we can help with all types of insurances. We're all about making sure you understand what you're covered for, for and a claim gets paid out and be as competitive as possible. So we love all the standard stuff but we also really excel when it starts to get a little bit complicated, when you need that little bit of advice. So when we're talking JCTs, construction projects where lenders are asking for lots of different quirky clauses or just outright bonkers, you know, HMO above a firework shop, something like that, we're all ears. And the community, I mean you can help us spread the word and bring lots of different property deals to the table so we can make sure we can improve many more insurance policies out there. Because you touched upon a simple example there with rent to rent. How many of those are making policies invalid? And that's just one example. So yes, more so cleaning up the industry so lots more things can be covered rather than having a piece of paper that you think okay, I've, I've got myself covered where actually it's just a waste of money.

Yeah, no, I agree, I did like we've actually got one more question coming right at the end and it is, where can we purchase the rent guarantee insurance? I heard that it must be through a letting agent. Can I purchase the portfolio?

Yeah, it doesn't have to be for a letting agent. No, letting agents tend to have ways that you would, they would sell it to you without you even knowing it. So it might be included within your, within your fee. So if so it might just be easier to have that included there. If not, you're not obliged to do that. You could say don't take it if you can find cheaper, cheaper policies elsewhere. So you can get in touch with us through the website, give us a call, drop us an email and we can send you all the details about our rent guarantee. So we have the standard rent guarantees for single lets and then we have an exclusive product for HMOs which is quite unique. So that will cover all your units within the HMO and it will cover you up to two and a half grand. For each tenant. So HMO rent guarantee is something available through us as well, which I'm pretty sure letting agents don't have just from doing the market research.

Brilliant. And we've got another question that's come through.

Far them away. I could talk about insurance all day, I'm boring like that.

What is your success rate of claims submitted in terms of successful payout?

Off top of my head, I couldn't tell you and I wouldn't want to just give you a wishy washy answer. However, I do know from the claims that I personally look after, they can be stressful. Some of them will be cases whereby loss adjusters will go out and they'll come up with a question or they'll come up with a situation. And this is not against all loss adjusters. Some are very smooth, but a lot of the times it can cause number one, delays and number two, they'll start to ask things that potentially are irrelevant. So as a broker, we look after you. We can go back to the loss adjuster and insure and we get things paid out. But I appreciate how that process would be very, very stressful if you're direct with an insurer and you have no support whatsoever. So I would like to think that if all the information you tell us from the start, if there is a claim that should be covered on the wording, it will get paid out. Obviously I can't put my hand in my heart because there'll be the odd thing that isn't disclosed that might get thrown out. But we tend to look at cover so things much more eventualities are paid rather than going cheap, cheap, cheap and just hoping something sticks. Having said that, we are still competitive. I don't want to price myself out and say, look, we're pricing ourselves up as a Rolls Royce, but we are competitive. We've also given that cover.

Fantastic. Okay, and then any final remarks before we wrap up?

No, it's great. It's my first time talking to your audience, so it's fantastic. I really appreciate you sort of coming on. I love, I love the site, I love how it works. So it's a pleasure to sort of.

Now, I appreciate that. And guys, just to let you know as well, if you go onto the community and you go into the partner offers, you have actually got the insurance desk there as well. And it says here you can save £199 on your insurance and protection review. So if you want to get in touch with Josh, Josh has given his details or you can go through there and click through there and you can get in touch with that. But now it's time to wrap up. But let's talk about next week. So next week is huge. It's the hundredth episode of the Deal Finders Corner and we are celebrating in style when none other than the man, the myth, the legend himself, Hanif Khan. With over 20 years in the game and more than 500 property deals under his belt, Hanif isn't just a property veteran, he is a deal making machine and a mentor we're very proud to have at Proper Property Filter. In this game changing episode, Hanif pulls back the curtain on the exact strategies delivering results right now in today's UK's property market. No fluff, no theory, just pure tactics straight from his high performing mastermind group. If you want to know what's really working right now, then you can't afford to miss this one. But for now, all is left to say is the usual visit propertyfilter.co.uk log onto your Property Filter account, check out the deal blueprint, define your gold mine area, engage with motivated sellers, assess properties in seconds, load your pipelines and make deals, have an endless supply of deals, join the top 1% and become a high achiever. So that's me, Asif from Property Filter. Looking forward to seeing you all next week. But in the meantime, as usual, go and grab them deals and we'll catch you very, very soon. Thank you guys. Have a great week and thank you again, Josh.

Thank you very much. Speak.