04 Oct 2012 19:27:
If you happen to have a holiday home on an urbanisation with a committee and a president, then you probably have a blanket buildings cover for all the properties on your urbanisation.
Great you might think, all you need to do is get some contents cover and you are fully covered for every eventuality.
Well, if like us you have chosen to get that contents cover from a UK based broker, you might not have the cover you expect.
Our buildings cover is arraigned through the urbanisation and it covers all the building and communal areas, including items regarded as contents of those communal areas. So we thought, let’s get the contents cover for our home from a UK based broker so that if we have to claim the process would be a lot easier as we do not speak very much Spanish.
This brought up some important issues; In the UK, building insurance generally covers the structure and all fixtures and fittings, and contents covers all the rest. So if you were to turn the house upside-down everything that falls out is contents and the rest is buildings. So I posed the question to the Spanish buildings insurer, “are the bathroom fixtures and fittings and the kitchen fixtures and fittings covered in the buildings cover?”
The answer was; “The contents of your house are not covered under the Community’s policy, only the building structure and some contents in common spaces have insurance cover in this policy.
In order to have insurance for your own contents, thus also the fixtures and fitting in bathroom and kitchen, you will need to take out your own separate insurance policy.”
Likewise the contents policy in the UK doesn’t cover the bathroom fixtures and fittings and the kitchen fixtures and fittings either.
So just be aware and make sure you get both buildings and contents cover from the same country or broker as some items might not be covered!
Thread:
Insuring your holiday home…….
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