Are your gites insured?
The following is a note of caution to anyone owning and renting out holiday rental property in France. The story will undoubtedly make 90% of you think we’re idiots, but it might just help the other 10%. So be gentle on me if you’re in the 90%.
When we first started renting out gites about five years ago we spoke with a local insurance company about what cover we needed, and have been paying handsomely for the pleasure ever since. Buildings, contents and 3rd party liability insurances, we’ve got the lot.
Due to a strange quirk we actually pay more for the insurance on the house we rent out than for our own house, because when a property is left empty a lot of the time (we only rent it out May to September) it is deemed to be at greater risk. Even though it is straight across a courtyard from our own house.
We have recently been moving all our insurances to a different company, for reasons I won’t trouble you with. At the final ’signing ceremony’ we happened to make a casual comment about the benefits of the house burning down (it seemed amusing at the time). We were told that if a holidaymaker happened to burn the house down (smoking, candle falling over, fat fire etc) it would be their insurance that would pay, not our own.
This sounded a little bit ’surprising’. And a big bit scary.
When we have ourselves stayed at French owned holiday rental properties, we have been asked to produce a copy of our own (French, of course) insurance, because this shows that we are covered if we cause accidental damage. This is completely standard in French insurance policies.
What I hadn’t connected is that the insurance for our own gites was based on this assumption – that everyone staying in them would have their own insurance as well. Fine if you have have French people staying, and ask to see their policy. Not fine otherwise.
So if someone from the UK had burned our house down during the last five years, the house itself would have been uninsured. I think you would agree this is not a good thing. Trying to claim from someone in a different country, on an insurance policy that probably doesn’t even exist in the first place, is unlikely to be a big success.
So we’ve now paid even more to get even more insurance cover, that actually protects us a bit against some of the more predictable risks.
Like I say, most of you will have read this and feel sorry for our stupidity for not checking more carefully in the first place. Ha ha you will say, I’m glad we are not so useless.
But while you are saying it, you might like to just double check that you are really and definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, insured against such things yourself – because a week ago I would have laughed and sworn that we were completely covered.
In fact I would have been so confident I would have smiled sympathetically, and not even bothered checking…
Boris I doubt that its 10% who don’t know, more likely to be 90% though this will only apply to those with french insurance as it seems all french insurers have this quirky little clause which assumes all visitors will be french. I found this out some 10 years ago by chance when another quirky clause was invoked on me. This time it was a claim for storm damage when tiles from my roof were taken off by the wind and smash into my greenhouse, the wind then ripped most of the remaining glass out. I was told it was my tiles therefore it was my responsibility,on quirying this my agent informed me he was dealing with a clients case where a father and son were driving in opposite directions on a narrow lane and had a collision, the insurer refused to pay out as both cars were on the fathers policy.
It took a fiscal lawyer several weeks to sort out my policy with the insurer so that now I have a “Professional multi-risk Policy”.
I’m sure that there are other problems with insurance out there so be warned.
I think most people will be unaware of this, and just assume they are covered.
It is common in France that if a French person renting your gite/holiday home causes damage, then you claim on their home insurance. But as you point out, this is not the case for UK/overseas renters, and getting standalone liability insurance for renting a French gite is difficult.
Someone renting from the UK may be covered for third party liability as part of their travel insurance, but what happens if they don’t have travel insurance?
This will only apply to those with French insurance. UK holiday letting insurance would normally cover the homeowner for damage by guests.
Homeowners should take note of this and double check they are covered when renting to non-French residents.
We knew about this – not because we are clever so-and-so’s (we are not!) but only because we rent out an apartment in France to ‘curistes’ (who are always French).
The previous owner gave us copies of all her documentation including proposals and contracts which made us query the paragraph that said they had to provide a written ‘attestation’ from their home insurers proving that they were covered for damage at our property BEFORE being allowed into the property.
Problems start, not only as you mentioned (if we ever rent to non-French) but also if we let UK friends/family stay (rent free) when they come to visit us – we would not be covered.
With French clients, we have problems if (say) they live at home with their parents, because their parents’ insurance would not cover them…it is all SO SO different here, with hidden pitfalls!
Jacqui U
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Thanks all, it’s good to hear that it’s not just me being daft. I suppose it means we have to look through all our other insurance policies as well. Should make for a fun evening.
When we claimed for our swimming-pool liner we thought our cover would be enough, but it only covered the ‘early stages’ so as soon as europiscine said they weren’t going to pay and the only option was to go to court…our insurance legal cover stopped as well. A fact they were perhaps aware of when they refused to pay up?
I would probably put money on it…..
[...] our (and probably many others) gites were not properly insured. You can read about that at ‘oops I forget to insure my property‘ (as it should have been [...]