Insurance- I've saved £121

I've just knocked £121 or 14% off my total landlord insurance bill of £971 bringing it down to £850.

How to save on your landlord insurance

I shouldn't really be telling you this. It's going to cost Property Hawk money so I'm going to get into trouble with my fellow directors. But what the hell. I've just managed to negotiate over 120 quid of the quoted renewal cost for my landlord insurance premium.

I tried a little experiment and it came off.

My residential portfolio is modest with 7 properties, but still enough of a ball ache to deter me from phoning up a whole series of landlord insurance companies for a quote or to go through the rigmarole of an online quote for each property. So my cunning plan was to put together an insurance schedule on a spreadsheet with the amount of cover I wanted and then email a series of landlord insurance companies to see if they would quote.

I selected a series of insurers from the insurance list and found out their email address.

I then sent them the schedule by email.

Not all were able to quote but I got several replies, both less than my renewal fee. Before quoting both companies wanted to check a couple of facts but the phone calls were brief, no more than 5 minutes.

The first was from Click 4 Quote who came back very promptly with a quote for £956.63. This beat my original renewal quote. The next quote came from the very helpful Emma at CIA insurance. She had found a policy through Rentguard who could do my insurance for £856.88.

Fantastic - that was way below my target price of £920.

Now I could have gone straight with them. But no I thought. I like the guys at Alan Boswell & better the devil you know kinda thing. Plus there cover includes cover on carpets and curtains, which the Rentguard policy didn't. So, lets be cheeky I thought. I emailed the landlords section at Alan Boswell and asked whether they could do my insurance for £850. Cheeky heh! They responded by saying they would have to check with the underwriters. Then the email saying they can.

Great - that's a real £120+ saving straight in my pocket.

All I can say is keep this to yourself - otherwise it's going to cost me a fortune in lost commission.

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