It's empty. Your cover might be, too.
An empty house feels lower-risk than an occupied one, no tenants, nothing happening. The opposite is closer to the truth. Vacant dwellings attract intruders, deteriorate unwatched, and (the part most owners miss) often fall outside the very policy meant to protect them, because standard home and landlord cover tends to step back once a place has been unoccupied for a while.
Where an empty dwelling gets exposed
A vacant building carries risks bare land doesn't: a structure that can be entered, floors and roofs that decay, and long stretches where nobody's checking on any of it. As the owner, you're still the occupier in the eyes of the law, and often with less cover behind you than you'd assume. All scenarios below are illustrative examples.
The intruder who got hurt
The empty house sits between tenants. Someone forces a door, gets inside, and a rotted section of floor gives way. They fall through and are seriously injured. Despite the unlawful entry, they claim you left a known hazard in a building you failed to secure.
The hazard that fell
Months of neglect leave a section of the roof loose. In a storm it comes away and lands on a passer-by on the footpath, or on a neighbour's car. They claim you should have maintained the building and prevented an obvious risk.
The gap between tenants
An incident occurs while the property is empty between leases, and the landlord policy's unoccupancy clause has already suspended the liability cover you assumed was running. The claim arrives, and the policy you were relying on isn't there to meet it.
The clause that quietly switches off
The unoccupancy clause most owners never check
The costliest assumption here is that your home or landlord policy keeps protecting an empty house indefinitely. Many don't. Cover for an unoccupied dwelling is commonly restricted or excluded once the property has been empty beyond a set period (sometimes spelled out as a number of consecutive days), and owners rarely check until a claim exposes it.
The second thing to be clear on: this is liability cover, not property cover. It answers claims made against you by other people. Damage to the building itself (fire, water, storm) needs property cover, and property cover on a vacant home is its own conversation, because those policies restrict vacant-period cover too.
Common questions
Isn't a vacant house covered by my home or landlord policy?
Often only up to a point. Many policies restrict or exclude cover once a home has been unoccupied beyond a set period. Check the unoccupancy clause in your wording. That's where the gap usually hides.
It's only empty for a few weeks between tenants.
Short gaps may sit inside your existing policy's limits. It's the longer vacancies (renovations, a slow sale, a drawn-out re-let) where cover thins out and this becomes worth having.
Does this cover fire or water damage to the house itself?
No. This responds to liability claims made against you by other people. The building's own damage needs property cover, which we can look at separately.
I'm renovating the empty place, am I covered?
Basic upkeep, generally. But once it becomes construction or major works, you're into Contract Works territory, which is a different policy. Tell us what's planned and we'll point you the right way.
Someone broke in and got hurt, surely that's on them?
Not necessarily. As the occupier you can owe a duty of care even to people who entered unlawfully, particularly where there was a known hazard. This is exactly the kind of claim the cover is built for.
There's a standing house on a block I'm selling, land cover or building cover?
If there's a habitable or standing dwelling, it's the vacant-building option rather than bare land. If you're not sure which side of the line you're on, give us a call and we'll sort it.