Holiday Home Insurance – What cover do you need?

Posted February 11, 2009 – 11:12 am in: Landlord Insurance

In all the excitement of buying your holiday home, it’s hard to think about things going wrong. That may be why the insurance industry has warned that a large number of holiday homes are completely uninsured!

Yet if there is one type of home that does need insuring, it’s a holiday home. Your holiday home is extra vulnerable – long periods of lying empty lead to higher risk of both burglary and weather damage. So what types of holiday home insurance do you need?

• Buildings insurance. This is the obvious one and in fact if you have a mortgage, your lender will almost certainly insist on adequate buildings insurance. Make sure you insure for the rebuild value, not just the market value. If you have a survey done when you are buying, the survey report will include a rebuild estimate for holiday home insurance purposes.

• Contents insurance. Very few insurers will let you include the contents of your holiday home in the contents policy on your main home. You need to take out a separate holiday home insurance contents policy. You must make it very clear to the insurer that it is for a holiday home that is not occupied all the time. Otherwise, if an incident occurs in your absence, like burglary or a fire, you may find you’re not covered. The premiums will almost certainly be higher than for your main residence, but you must pay them. (Holiday home insurance policies don’t usually cover personal valuables. If you take valuables to your main home, make sure they are insured under your main household policy.)

• Public liability insurance. Most household policies include legal liability insurance as standard – just make sure yours does. If it’s optional, take it. It is essential, especially if you are planning to let the property. Even if you’re not, there are all sorts of things that could happen. Friends using it could have an accident, or there could be a fire or leakage in your absence that damaged other people’s property.

• Employer’s liability insurance. If you are employing anyone in connection with your holiday home, such as a cleaner or a gardener, you must have this cover.

Don’t let your dream holiday home turn into a nightmare. If you can’t afford holiday home insurance, you should consider whether you can afford a holiday home at all.


  Tags: