Important tips for insuring your holiday home to let
Friday, May 22nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
If you own a holiday home abroad, letting it out when you’re not using it can be a convenient source of easy income, not to mention the reassurance that your property is in use and being looked after rather than sitting empty. Unfortunately in reality it’s not that simple and there are risks involved in allowing strangers to stay in your holiday home. After all, you have a lot of money invested in your place in the sun, and letting, although there are obvious benefits, increases the risk to your property and possessions. But it is a problem easily solved, all you need to do is make sure that your second home insurance policy covers you for the type of problems that could arise from letting your holiday home.
A lot of insurance policies for holiday homes do not include cover people other than family and friends, so make sure you get a specialist holiday let insurance policy, which will allow you to rent the property to other tenants. Of course the risks of allowing strangers into your holiday home are obvious, so choosing a policy that includes accidental damage on the part of those strangers will help reassure you that you are protected for any eventuality. You should also consider the potential loss of rental income if something happened to the property – some policies will not only cover this cost but also provide alternative accomodation for you or your tenants.
When you’re choosing your insurance policy the main thing to remember is to make sure you always read the small print thoroughly. You might find that house insurance in Spain, Italy and other popular holiday destinations is cheaper to buy from the country in question, but these European policies for holiday homes are often a lot more limited than UK policies in the cover they offer. For instance some countries do not insure property against damage caused by a guest or tenant as standard, because in these countries it is assumed that visitors will be aware they should have their own ‘liability insurance’ policy. A catch like this in your insurance policy could put people off visiting from the UKL as they would have to pay more for their travel insurance, not to mention the fact that if anything did happen and the tenants were uninsured, you wouldn’t be covered. The easiest solution is to take out a second home policy based in the UK, where public liability insurance is included in the premium as standard.
Another common mistake that holiday home owners make is accidentally signing a policy that requires them to visit the property once a week to perform regular checks. Failure to cpomplete these checks would mean the policy was invalid but it’s clearly not possible when your second home is in another country. Fortunately there are many policies that don’t include requirements like this, so shop around for the best deal but remember that it is still a good idea to have an agent or a reliable neighbour look in on your holiday home regularly for your peace of mind and in case anything does go wrong while you are away.
Technorati Tags: No Tags
Related Tags: No Tags
Possible Related Posts
