Not all damage is accidental - protect your investment!

Accidents happen - that's just a part of life. It's also something landlords must come to terms with.

Renting out a home to tenants means putting your investment in the hands of others. While you can make it clear you expect your property to be treated respectfully, there's no foreseeing how accidents in the future may damage your real estate.

It's because of this that proper insurance cover should be a part of every landlord's repertoire.

However, not all accidents are so innocent.

Being a landlord means building relationships, and when those relationships sour, it can mean malicious damage.

Say you and one of your tenants get into a dispute about the rent. While you want to believe the best in people, there's no telling if an unbalanced individual may decide to get back at a perceived slight by causing damage to your investment.

It can be a costly and time-consuming process to extra money for repairs from tenants. You might struggle to get any money from them at all .

With this in mind, landlords would be wise to add cover to their home and contents insurance policies that specifically protect against malicious damage.

The right cover can help you pay for repairs of malicious damage caused to your building, as well as the cost to replace parts of the buildings that may be stolen. If damage causes you to close down the building and lose out on rent, the right cover can provide you with financial protection in certain circumstances.

For instance, if your rental property is unoccupied for more than seven days because of malicious and intentional damage to the premises, you can count on your landlord insurance helping you with the loss of rental income.