A lettings administrator proved a hero when, with floods threatening, she and her husband paid an emergency visit to the office at night to unplug and move all the computers.
In fact, the Belvoir offices in Boston, Lincolnshire, escaped the floods – although a number of their tenants did not – but the conscientious and resourceful Renata Wiercinska has been praised.
Donna Burrell, the Belvoir franchisee, said: “I am very grateful to Renata and her husband. We had no internet connection the next day and were inundated with phone calls and people coming into the office that had been affected by the floods.
“We had to resort to our manual filing system to get the numbers of landlords and find out which properties had been affected. It was a very busy time.”
She said that the floods, caused by a surge of tidal water affecting much of the country including the east coast, had caused huge problems to tenants.
She said landlords needed to check their insurance policies to ensure they have adequate cover in case of emergencies.
She said: “We had several rental homes that were flooded in the Boston area and one was a terrace property divided into two flats.
“The tenants were a husband and wife and their 12-month-old baby.
“The husband worked nights, and during the early evening the river in Boston burst its banks and water flooded through the house so the woman had to climb out of the kitchen window with her baby and be rescued by boat.
“Her distraught husband came in to our office the next day because he didn’t know where she was and we had to ring around all the refuges to find out where she had been taken. Luckily we managed to reunite them and find them new accommodation in a three-bedroom furnished house.
“The landlord of the flooded property had contents insurance with us and after a lot of liaison with Endsleigh, our insurance provider, we managed to reassure him that his policy not only covered the cost of the damage but also covered the cost of new accommodation for his tenants. Otherwise he would have been paying the rent on that too.
“I heard on the radio that out of 422 properties that were flooded in Boston a total of 419 had no contents insurance, which is quite shocking really.
“We now desperately need new properties as some insurance companies are insisting that tenants move out whil repairs are carried out. We have even had other agents ringing us to see if we can help.
“Specialist insurance is vitally important and I hope more people will consider taking this out to get peace of mind and ensure that their families are taken care of in the case of an emergency.”
Comments
If the landlord in question hadn't been insured its very unlikely he'd have been legally responsible for the cost of alternative accommodation for his tenants.
And, of course, contrary to what many tenants think, it the landlord has "contents" insurance it only usually covers stuff owned by the landlord, so if the tenant hasn't taken out their own contents insurance their own stuff probably won't be covered.
Back in the days when we could recommend that tenants took out insurance a cocky student told us that as the landlord had his own insurance we were trying to make him double insure items which - he triumphantly told us - is illegal and would get us into trouble if he reported us to Trading Standards.
I resisted the temptation to clip him round the ear and call him "Sonny" as I explained that the landlord's insurance only covered his own stuff, not the tenants.