Having a holiday home can be exciting. It can be your personal getaway destination or provide extra income as a rental property.
However, if you have a holiday home, keeping it protected is essential. Property damage or stolen items are potential risks to consider. For this reason, holiday home insurance is critical.
Comparing options is ideal if you're looking for the best holiday home insurance cover. You'll need to look at a few providers to get the best deal. But if you're looking for a shortcut, we've done the feature research for you.
In today's article, we provide first-hand reviews of the top holiday home insurance providers. Let's take a comprehensive look at this cover and then the best providers.
| Provider | Score | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Homeprotect | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
| 2. Intasure | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
| 3. Schofields Insurance | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
| 4. Direct Line | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
| 5. My Holiday Home Insurance | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
| 6. Saga | ★★★★★ | Click Here |
What Is Holiday Home Insurance Cover? Overview
A brief explanation of holiday home insurance cover is that it offers protection for property abroad, a second home used as a holiday property or rental in the UK, or a rental property abroad.
It's ideal for covering the cost of many expenses. For instance, it can cover property content and legal fees. It's, therefore, a handy option, especially if the property gets damaged.
Why Do You Need Holiday Home Insurance Cover?
You'll need holiday home insurance coverage for a few reasons.
The following factors are important and may require you to take out insurance for holiday homes:
✅ You might be away from your holiday home. If someone steals your items in your absence, the insurance applies and covers the replacement costs.
✅ If paying guests stay in your holiday home and injure themselves, cover can help. A specific holiday home insurance policy can cover the cost of legal fees. This cover is especially important if the guest chooses to sue you. It is known as public liability insurance.
✅ Holiday home cover is ideal for a loss of rental income while the property is uninhabitable. This outcome may result from damage to the holiday home from natural causes. Insurance can cover you if your property goes long without a tenant or if you need to cancel a booking.
How Does Holiday Home Insurance Cover Work?
Holiday home insurance policies work by covering your holiday property costs when you follow a few steps.
It helps you handle expenses for property risks and damages when you complete an application. Here are the steps involved with the application process:
✅ The process involves completing a form. You'll need to include the holiday home location and size and provide accurate data so the provider can review the application.
✅ The insurance company completes an underwriting process. After the assessment, they'll let you know the insurance risks involved. They will calculate your premium by considering the construction materials, the property value and other factors.
✅ The company will issue policy documents to you. The documents will contain the coverage terms and conditions. You'll need to review the conditions and check the exclusions.
✅ You'll make a premium payment according to the policy. You've got the option to pay in instalments. Alternatively, you can make one lump sum payment.
What Are the Different Types of Holiday Home Insurance Cover?
Several types of holiday home insurance exist.
Each offers different coverage types. You can choose from the options below.
👉 Buildings insurance — Covering the holiday home structure, this insurance applies if the property is damaged. It's ideal if the property is vandalised or sustains weather-related damage.
👉 Holiday home contents insurance — This covers your belongings if your items are damaged or lost. It's ideal if someone steals your personal items.
👉 Combined contents cover and buildings insurance — You'll have cover for your holiday home structure and personal belongings with this insurance policy.
👉 Holiday let insurance — You'll have cover for holiday properties you rent out with this policy. It's ideal for short-term property renting and covers accidental damage.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Holiday Home Insurance?
This insurance type has plenty of advantages.
However, it has a few drawbacks. Let's look at the pros and cons of holiday home insurance.
Pros
✅ Options to select the right coverage level — Many insurance companies will let you select the cover level. The option to tailor your policy means you'll always get the cover you require.
✅ Alternative accommodation reimbursement — If your holiday home is uninhabitable, your cover will reimburse you for the cost of alternative accommodation.
✅ Cover for electrical fault damage — Your property may sustain electrical fault damage or damage due to power surges. In this case, some holiday home premium options will offer to cover these expenses.
Cons
❌ Extra holiday home expenses — Your premium or holiday home insurance quote may be higher than the one you have with your primary residence. This greater cost is due to higher risks for damage, which can happen due to long-term vacancy.
❌ Deductibles before receiving coverage — You need to pay a deductible of a specific amount before receiving coverage. For example, your policy may expect you to pay a £600 deductible fee when you require coverage of £2,000. This outcome means you would only receive coverage of £1,400 with the deductible taken from the cover.
❌ Potential for cancelled policy in some cases — With excessive claims comes the potential for a cancelled policy. If you make multiple claims, the provider may consider you a high risk and end the coverage.
Best Holiday Home Insurance Cover
We tried six of the best holiday home insurance provider policies.
To help you compare them, here's what we found about each policy.
1. Homeprotect
We used Homeprotect and found that it offers home insurance for vacant properties for 30 days. It covered our cottage property, but our research told us it's valid for mansions, lodges, country homes and barn conversions.
We were pleased to be covered for electricity failure, faulty locks and uncontrollable leaks and receive a 24-month guarantee for the building work we received through Homeprotect. What also came with Homeprotect was the potential to receive a cash settlement when they could not replace our belongings.
We noticed that wear and tear, theft, accidental damage caused by paying guests, alternative accommodation, and a few other factors were not covered by Homeprotect. When we used this policy, we could choose from a few levels of cover.
Some of the levels of coverage that Homeprotect offers include building insurance, contents coverage, liability insurance, home emergency, loss of rent, and more. We would have been covered for costs of £1m with buildings insurance and could have received cover starting from £25,000 with contents insurance from this provider.
2. Intasure
In addition to holiday let and chalet insurance, Intasure offers insurance for cottages abroad, in the UK, and many other insurance types. We used the cottage insurance for our home abroad and found it covered many factors.
For instance, Intasure covered the cost of escaping water from our household fixtures. We were also covered for flood damage to the building.
Had we been a victim of theft or malicious damage, we would have had the option of being covered by Intasure.
Thanks to their many insurance levels, we had tailored coverage for our specific needs. This specialist holiday home insurance provider offers building insurance, public liability insurance, coverage whether the building was occupied or vacant, loss of rent cover, and others.
With the vacant property cover feature, what was ideal was that even if the property was empty for two months, we faced no restrictions.
We were pleased that Intasure's cover applies to homes in multiple countries. They covered our property in Spain, and research told us they also cover multiple European countries, including the UAE and Turkey.
3. Schofields Insurance
We received multiple perks when we used Schofields Insurance to insure our holiday home. We could rent out our holiday home with the peace of mind that we would be protected. When our holidaymaker tenants damaged our home, Schofields Insurance covered the damage.
When our holiday home was unoccupied, we faced no restrictions from Schofields Insurance.
What was also ideal about Schofields Insurance was its many features. It offered us full theft cover without the requirement of forced entry proof, public liability insurance up to £5m, the option to receive alternative accommodation cover, insurance to cover legal expenses, fee-free services and others.
We were pleased with the competitive excess for the escape of water from pipes. We received a slightly more convenient deal with Schofields Insurance compared with some of the alternative providers we used in this respect.
Although we were covered for multiple reasons since our specific holiday home is in the United Kingdom, we noticed that Schofields Insurance doesn't offer coverage for overseas properties. The lack of this feature meant we could not use this provider for our other Spain-based holiday home.
4. Direct Line
With Direct Line, we could receive multiple types of holiday home insurance cover. We could receive building cover and take out new-for-old contents insurance, public liability insurance and alternative accommodation cover.
A large range of optional cover is also available through Direct Line, including loss of rent, legal expenses cover and accidental damage insurance.
We found that Direct Line does not cover mobile homes or caravans. The lack of this feature meant we were only covered for standard build properties made of brick or concrete. We also found that Direct Line does not cover properties outside the United Kingdom.
We were pleased that Direct Line offers a few other benefits with its holiday home insurance policy. Even when we needed to make changes to the policy, we did not need to pay any admin fees. We could use the support of a specialised claims handler when needed and had the potential to add 15 properties to our single policy.
Since one of our properties was for business use, this provider did not cover us for this purpose. They were able to offer cover for our holiday home only.
Other optional cover was available from Direct Line, including malicious damage, personal accident and subsidence cover.
5. My Holiday Home Insurance
When we used My Holiday Home Insurance, we found that several cover types were available. The types of properties we could receive cover for included chalets, houses or cottages.
We applied for European holiday home insurance by requesting an online quote. The process was relatively straightforward and applied to our chalet in Spain.
Specifically, this provider offers buildings and contents cover.
Its building cover was ideal for our circumstances because of the potential flooding damage our property could have sustained. It gave us the peace of mind that we would have been covered in that situation.
We were pleased with the contents cover since we also rented out a different holiday home, which contained several personal belongings. With this contents cover, we did not need to worry about potential damage to our belongings.
To get the right cover, we considered the cost of our belongings we had the correct cover from My Holiday Insurance.
We liked that My Holiday Home Insurance is a flexible provider that acknowledges that properties may be vacant for long periods. They could work around our specific situation and were happy to discuss our cover even if our property would be vacant for more than 60 days,
6. Saga
We found that Saga is ideal for holiday homes located in the United Kingdom. They do not provide holiday home insurance for property overseas, but multiple types of coverage are also available.
For instance, we were able to receive coverage for home emergencies, legal expenses, and personal belongings that may have been damaged.
With Saga, we could also receive liability coverage for accidental damage and loss of income for rental properties.
Saga offers contents insurance as well as building insurance. We were pleased that the structure of our holiday home was protected despite potential storm and flooding damage and that our permanent fixtures were also protected.
We were also pleased that the contents of our home, including furniture, were covered by Saga's insurance policy.
Best Holiday Home Insurance: The Verdict
Holiday home insurance can be beneficial for multiple reasons. Two of the best options available to UK holiday property owners include Direct Line and Saga. With the list we have created, you have a few good options. But it still makes sense to explore a wide selection of holiday home insurance providers to choose the best.
Protecting your holiday home is important. Select top holiday home insurance providers to get the coverage you need and the peace of mind that your unexpected expenses are under control.
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