Fire insurance - notification on change of tenants
Monday, 18 January 2010 21:42
Lim Boon Ping
This has always being neglected by property owners. Under the fire insurance terms and condition, you as the property owners are obliged to submit changes to the tenancies to your insurers promptly.
That is to say that you will be paying different premium for the fire insurance. For example, if you have a carpentry as your tenant, you will be paying tariff at approximately 0.7% whereas a storeroom carries a tariff of approximately 0.2%. Yes, higher risk's tenant will cost you as a owner to pay higher premium. By paying the sufficient premium to your insurers, then only you will be able to avoid any disputes in the case of claims against fire.
From now onwards, do inform your insurers whenever there is a change in your tenants.
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My tenant didn't pay utility bills!
Sunday, 01 November 2009 22:53
Lim Boon Ping
I've rented a firstfloor office in Taman Molek to a tenant, after a almost a year, the landlord came back to me and inform me that the tenant has owed electricity bills over RM2000, which has way exceeded the utility deposit paid to the owner. Tenaga Nasional Berhad has also sent out warning letter few times indicating that they are going to disconnect the electricity supply.
Later i found out, the tenant didn't really owe anything. What happened here was that, the TNB meter is inside the building, not visible to the TNB people whenever they came to inspect the meter reading, and the tenant is hardly around. As a result, TNB put in an estimated figures every month, which comes to about RM500 usage per month.
I've gone to the tenant's office, and took down the actualy meter reading, then verify the figures with TNB. TNB officers immediately re-adjusted the bills according to the actual readings.
Few tips for those of you having the same scenario, i.e. where your TNB meter is not visible to the TNB people, just write down the current meter reading for say every 2 weeks on a piece of paper plus the date, and paste it on the front door. It's simple, isn't it?
One word of advice for all landlords, please always collect the paid utility bills from your tenant at least every two months, and keep track on your tenant's payment to avoid any unnecessary arguments later.
For your information, one of my client's tenant owed over RM80,000 of water bills over a period of 6 months!
Tenancy Law - fire insurance
Sunday, 01 March 2009 23:33
Lim Boon Ping
One of our client's tenanted factory has recently got burnt down, and he isn't covered by fire insurance! He suspected it was an act of arson by someone he knew, and he asked me for advice.
First thing i told him, go to a lawyer for professional advice. To my best knowledge, this is what he can do:
(1) Report police and let the police the investigate the cause of fire
(2) Cancel the existing tenancy, and full refund the deposits collected as the building has already become unfit for occupancy
(3) Fork up own money to repair/rebuild the factory building
(4) Should the police found any evidence of arson and suspect, you may then sought legal advice on the possibility of lodging a civil suit against the offender asking for compensation. Can you get back the compensation from that suspect? More often not, nobody can give you a definite answer.
All property are made compulsory to renew fire insurance by the financial consitution if your property is still charged to the bank. Problems occurs when the owners has finished pay up the owning and the property becomefree of any encumbrances, many owners from then on forget to renew their fire insurance on a yearly basis.
Did you find the above tedious especially when it comes to getting compensation? Yes, they are very tedious, so, PLEASE ALWAYS PURCHASE AND RENEW YOUR FIRE INSURANCE AGAINST YOUR BUILDING EVERY YEAR!
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