Holiday Home Insurance: Don’t skimp on your cover

• Buildings insurance.  Make absolutely sure the sum insured covers the cost of rebuilding the holiday home, not just the market value.  If you had a survey done when you purchased the property, the estimated rebuild value should be in the survey report.  Sadly, if the worst happened and there was a fire when there was nobody at the house, it could be totally destroyed before any action was taken.  That isn’t the time to discover your holiday home insurance doesn’t cover the cost of rebuilding.
  
  
• Contents insurance. This needs to cover furniture, soft furnishings and electrical equipment – anything you would take with you if you were moving. (Most holiday home insurance policies don’t cover personal valuables.) Don’t just tot up what you think your contents are worth at the moment – you need to calculate what it would cost to replace them on a new for old basis.  Be generous in valuing your contents or you may find you are under-insured.
  
  
• Tenants.  If you are planning to let out your holiday home, you must check that your holiday home insurance policy allows you to do this.  Don’t just take it for granted but double-check – some policies specifically exclude tenants.  Make sure the policy allows you to claim for expenses that could arise if something happened to make the house uninhabitable while guests were staying there.  Not only would you have to refund what they had paid, but you would have to find them alternative accommodation, and you could be liable if they suffered any injuries or damage to their own property.  Plus of course you would lose any subsequent bookings during repair work.