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Insurance for estate agents and letting agents is designed to cover a multitude of risks facing real estate professionals. In an increasingly litigious industry, arranging specialist insurance for your business is vital. Failing to manage a sale or letting properly, causing damage to a customer’s home during a visit, or a fire at your business premises could have disastrous consequences.
Our letting and estate agents' insurance is not a single insurance product but a group of covers that can be tailored to protect you and your business if something goes wrong.
Cover at a glance:
- Specialist insurance for estate & letting agents
- Covers a multitude of risks facing real estate professionals
- Includes 24/7 legal helpline, business hub, fee dispute service & more
What is estate agents insurance?
Estate agents insurance is a type of business insurance created to protect estate agents against various risks they may face in their work. This insurance cover can include professional indemnity insurance to safeguard yourself and your business against any claims of negligence in the advice you give, and public liability insurance to cover injuries to third parties. If you are considering this specialised insurance, you may also choose to invest in office, legal expenses, and cyber insurance. Estate agents insurance helps ensure that your business remains financially secure if something goes wrong, meets legal requirements, and demonstrates professionalism to clients and partners.
Cover starting at
£5 a month*
*Price based on a letting agent requiring £1 million of public liability insurance.
Do real estate agents need insurance?
Propertymark - the UK's leading professional body for the real estate industry, and formerly the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) - requires a minimum level of professional indemnity insurance for estate agents. While joining is not compulsory, becoming a member of an industry professional body gives your clients the confidence that your business will meet certain standards.
In addition to this, if you work in residential lettings and property management, it’s likely you will need to join an approved client money protection scheme. It’s often a requirement with these schemes that you have professional indemnity insurance for letting agents.
Regardless of the above, obtaining the correct level of cover can act as a safety net. If a client trips and injures themselves during a viewing, you could be held liable if a claim is brought against you. To protect your business against the risk of a claim, it’s important to consider specialist cover.
Do estate agents need professional indemnity insurance?
For a letting or estate agent, professional indemnity insurance is the most important type of cover. Every business has the occasional unhappy client, but what if one of them decides to bring a claim against you due to professional negligence? For example, you list a property using incorrect information and it causes a sale to fall through, or one of your agents lets a property at a lower price than was agreed with the owner.
This is where professional indemnity insurance comes in. It covers the cost of defending your business against allegations of professional negligence and if unsuccessful, any compensation you need to pay out. Not only does it cover you for financial loss but also for damage to your reputation.
Insurance is available with limits ranging from £250,000 to £5m, and how much you need will depend on your specific business.
Example policy documents
If you have an existing policy with us, please sign in to view your policy documents.
Below you will find examples of the documents provided.
Do real estate agents need liability insurance?
Public and product liability insurance covers the cost of defending your business (including damages awarded against you if unsuccessful) if someone is injured, or their property damaged, which arises from you going about your business or supplying products. As an estate or letting agent, you routinely visit clients’ properties or they visit your office, this puts you at risk of potential claims against you for personal injury or property damage. Imagine you are valuing a property and you knock over an expensive vase, or a client trips over a piece of loose flooring in your office and injures their hip. Without sufficient estate and letting agent insurance, you could find yourself with a potentially significant financial burden. Cover limits range from £1m to £5m.
What insurance does a letting agent need?
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Employer’s liability insurance
In the UK, if your business has employees, it is a legal requirement to have employer’s liability insurance. It covers your business against claims for injury or illness suffered by employees arising from their employment. For example, one of your agents is showing a property to a perspective buyer, and trips over a loose wire and injures their hip. They may seek compensation for potential loss of earnings. Cover is provided for £10m.
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Legal expenses insurance
Legal expenses can quickly run into the tens of thousands of pounds, so if you’re dealing with client contracts regularly, it may be worth adding this cover. A lengthy dispute with a difficult client could leave you with hefty legal bills.
Legal expenses insurance pays your legal costs and expenses for contract disputes, tax enquiries (including IR35), attending jury service, debt recovery, personal injury, as well as any award you are required to pay following an employment dispute with an employee. There is a limit of £100,000.
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Directors and officers insurance
Directors and officers insurance covers the costs of defending you as a director or officer of your company against allegations of wrongful acts and any damages subsequently awarded against you. Cover is also provided in respect of the legal costs and expenses of defending actions for disqualification as a director, investigations, and extradition proceedings. Limits range from £100,000 to £5m.
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Office insurance
If your business has its own premises, it's worth considering adding office insurance to your policy. It covers your office buildings, office contents and computer equipment whilst on your business premises. So, if you have a fire, flood, or break in at the office, you won’t be out of pocket. It also insures your business against loss of income and/or additional trading expenses following events such as damage to your property. You can also choose to cover portable business equipment - such as laptops and mobile phones - on a worldwide basis
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Occupational personal accident insurance
Occupational personal accident insurance provides a weekly payment if you are unable to work due to temporary total disablement (subject to a 14-day deferment period) due to an accident at work, or when travelling to and from work. In the event of loss of limbs, sight, speech, hearing, permanent total disablement or death, a lump sum would be paid out. You should consider this cover if you would struggle to maintain an income following an accident that left you unable to work. Limits from £100/week to £500/week for temporary total disablement (£25k lump sum to £100k lump sum for permanent total disablement).
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Cyber and data risks insurance
Cyber insurance pays the costs of restoring data and equipment, informing clients, meeting ransom demands and loss of your net profit following a cyber-attack. It also pays your legal defence costs and damages you are legally liable to pay to other parties. If you hold confidential information about your clients and their projects on computers and other internet connected devices, you should consider to this cover.
How it works
Choose the cover you require
Get a quote you need in minutes
Buy online or contact one of our advisors
How much does letting and estate agents' insurance cost?
Costs for letting and estate agents’ insurance for businesses vary. At Markel Direct, we offer letting and estate agents' insurance from £5 a month for £1million worth of cover*.Our simple quote form asks about your business activities and offers you covers that may be of interest. You can choose to buy all or just some of the covers quoted, so you will only ever pay for the insurance you need.
Whether you work alone with no premises, doing commercial lets only, or you have several offices and a large team doing residential letting and property management, your estate agent insurance policy will be tailored to meet your specific needs.
And that’s not all, our policyholders receive access to the following additional benefit services designed to make your life easier (included as standard with certain covers).
- 24-hour legal advice helpline - we have an experienced team of solicitors on hand day and night to help you with any business-related legal queries, whether it's a question on health and safety, employment law, legal structures for your business, or how to handle a difficult client.
- Markel Business Hub access - our award-winning online resource of legal and business guides, and templates. Instantly download ready-made contracts, policies, procedures, and guidance you can use for your business - without paying any expensive legal fees.
- Fee dispute service - operated by one of the UK's leading law firms, this unique fee dispute helpline will provide specialist legal guidance and support.
- Public relations crisis management service - our specialist public relations crisis management firm, The Counsel House, can help manage allegations of fraud, injury caused to employees or the public, and official investigations into your company's affairs.
- Cyber response helpline - if you're the victim of a targeted cyber-attack, our cyber response helpline provides access to specialist solicitors and information security experts who will give expert legal and technical IT security guidance on the issues arising from cyber and data protection risks.
We can help you arrange your estate and letting agents insurance online in minutes or call our insurance experts on 0800 640 6600.
Ready to build your quote?
Our simple quote process will help you to find the right business insurance for your individual needs.
Frequently asked questions
These frequently asked questions are designed to help you and include questions relating to policy cover, pricing and ‘technical’ terms.
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Whta's the difference between professional indemnity and public liability
Professional indemnity insurance covers against allegations of professional negligence - which means it would cover you if you were to make an error or mistake in a piece of work for a client, such as an undervaluing a property based on incorrectly calculated square footage.
Public liability insurance covers against allegations of injury or illness caused to third parties by your negligence. This includes many of the slips, trips and falls that are associated with personal injury claims. In addition, public liability insurance covers against damage to third party property - for example, if you were to damage a client’s carpet while doing a viewing.
As they insure against different scenarios, it's important you consider arranging both types of cover to ensure you are properly protected.
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I need to arrange insurance to start work - do you provide proof of cover?
Yes. We provide a dedicated 'Confirmation of Liability Insurance' document (detailing the cover you have with us) as part of the documents that are emailed to you if you purchase your policy with us. You can use this document as proof that you are insured.
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What limit of cover should I choose?
Many clients and industry bodies with regulatory requirements will require you to have a minimum level of cover for you to undertake a contract, so it's worth checking this before you arrange cover. If you're unsure, give some thought to a worst-case scenario and the likely costs involved in putting your mistake right. We offer a range of limits on insurance, so you're sure to find the right cover for your business.
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Why should I choose Markel Direct's Insurance
Markel Direct has over 25 years of experience insuring contractors, consultants and self-employed professionals. We insure over 200,000 micro businesses and are highly rated by our customers at Feefo.com.
We are a division of Markel International, a Lloyd’s of London market insurer that wrote gross premium totals of £2.4bn in 2023
To talk about your insurance requirements and better understand our cover, call us on 0800 640 6600 or get a quick quote online.
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How are Markel Direct regulated?
Markel Direct is a trading name of Markel International Insurance Company Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Find out more on the Financial Services Register.
We are a division of Markel International, a Lloyd’s of London market insurer that wrote gross premium totals of £2.4bn in 2023
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