Most crucially – coach house insurance will include your legal liabilities to the leaseholder's of the garages underneath. Property owners legal liability must be included, and all the garages that form part of the building, must be included on the buildings insurance schedule.
All the garages must be mentioned on the title deeds of the property to be included on the coach house buildings insurance schedule / element of the policy. Any contents in the garages on lease will not be covered as those contents will belong to a third-party and not the policy holder – so the coach house insurance will only cover the garage itself. The contents of your own garage will be included as standard, as these contents will belong to you – the policyholder.
You also need to have impact and collision on the policy to protect the building from any damage caused by motor vehicles. There is sometimes a drive through underneath a coach house property providing access to the rear of the building and vehicle damage is a high risk – therefor this is not something that you should compromise on.
All perils such as fire, storm, flood, theft, subsidence etc … Are included as you would expect – just as they would do on an ordinary policy for a standard build property such as a detached house. Most insurance policy's will cover all perils – however it is advisable to make sure you read over the policy excesses. As standard most policy's will have a £ 100 excess, except for escape of water claims and subsidence claims when you expect the excess to be slightly higher. Escape of water can be between £ 250 and £ 500 per claim, and subsidence is usually £ 1000 per claim.
You can also include all the usual optional extras such as accidental damage, personnel possessions and specified items.
Best practitioner is to have accidental damage on the buildings elements as a minimum. One of the leaseholder's could accidentally damage their garage door – and they could ask you to claim on the insurance. This is why it is wise to read over policy excesses in advance – as the freeholder of the property, and the policy holder of the insurance you would have to pay the excess. You could certainly ask the leaseholder to pay or make a contribution, but depending on the deeds and contracts between you signed at purchase – they may not be obliged to make any contribution to the claim at all.
You can buy landlords coach house insurance if you let your coach house out. You can also buy coach house vacant property insurance too.
In a nutshell, your coach house insurance policy will be similar to regular buildings and contents insurance with just a few tweaks to the buildings elements.
