After years of scrimping and saving you’ve finally managed to buy your own little holiday cottage somewhere quiet and peaceful. This new property could be things you’re planning for when you retire to have somewhere warm to escape to or it could be somewhere you can enjoy family holidays and build memories. Whatever reason you’ve brought yourself a holiday home for it’s vital you get it insured properly.
No one buys a holiday home in the next town over so in most cases it could be several hours away by either car or by plane. Being so far away can be one reason your holiday cottage insurance is so much higher than your regular house insurance. After all, if there’s a disaster or if anything goes wrong you’re not going to be able to get there very quickly. If your house is going to be say empty for too long any burglars or squatters might soon notice it. If you decide to just get a quote for the building and not the contents you’ll notice you might be able to save some money. If you do end up doing this, none of your possessions are going to be covered. If this really is your second home you need to feel like it’s a home away from home. Insurance for holiday homes also means that if a pipe bursts or a storm damages your property you’re still covered. You could arrive at your property to find a storm knocked the chimney down several weeks ago and the house is badly damaged, regular house insurance wouldn’t cover this.
No matter if you’re after French property insurance or insurance for a house in China it’s essential that you take it seriously. You might be able to cut a few corners if your holiday home is abroad by opting for insurance taken from that country. A foreign policy won’t be as comprehensive though neither is the small print likely to be in a language you understand.
Investing money in property is still very popular with many people. Most people feel safe having their money sat in property rather than trusting banks after the recession. Holiday homes abroad are also becoming increasingly popular. For those with money invested in a second home it’s understandable they’ll be eager to start seeing some return on their investment. Renting it out is one way to do this.
If you are going to let your holiday home out there are several things you need to think about first. First off it’s essential you have proper second home insurance. Any visitors need to be covered by this insurance as well as the actual property. Your normal house hold insurance won’t be the same sort of policy and if you can you should avoid taking a policy in another country. Try searching in your search engine for overseas property insurance and you’ll be able to get a good list of providers who can give you several quotes.
Once you’ve got your holiday home insurance sorted you can think about marketing your property. You need to look at the look at things like the location of your holiday home as well as the style and layout and the price band. From this you’ll be able to gage exactly what sort of target audience you’ve got. You can then make subtle adjustments accordingly, for example making it child friendly if you’re main target audience is going to be families. If your property is close to a vibrant night life and a good beach you need to think about whether you’d be happy letting your property out to groups of younger people. Make it clear that you don’t want large young groups if you really don’t feel you want to let your property out to this target audience in your marketing.
It’s time to start looking into insurance for holiday homes again, because the good times have come again in select foreign property markets. France is one economy that has seen a rapid and successful recovery, and this has lead to a stable French property market that showed no fluctuation in price between July and September despite an increase in the number of actual sales.
The data was recently release by the Federation nationale des agents immobiliers (FNAIM), or a ‘National Federation of Estate Agents’ who represent 1700 agents in France. Futher details in the study suggest that property prices have risen in the Cote d’Azur, Brittany and in Aquitaine. They also indicate a sustained demand for the high-value, limited availability homes in popular French cities. They aren’t the only ones studying house prices and a contemporary study by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies in France (INSEE) suggests that the British are particularly enamoured with romantic France. 135,000 are living there full-time, and of that, 21,000 have their permanent home in Paris. This number is so significant, that Britons apparently account for 15% of home ownership in Paris. This Francophilia among the British is also indicated by the 30 million tourists who visited Paris in 2009 and indicates a massive market for second homes and holiday homes (with French property insurance) that remains unmentioned by the statistics. With the ever popular London to Paris Eurostar run, not the mention the cultural appeal of this important European city, it’d make the ideal home away from home.
With little land available in the heart of urban France, the premiums on these properties will only serve to strengthen the French economy further. But for the consumer, things can only get more expensive as time passes. If you’re in the market for a second home in France, it’s worth considering that the kind of stagnation on money-lending that many European countries are currently seeing is not an issue. Mortgages are easily available and with generous borrowing rates and 100 per cent loan-to-value. Support markets such as that for Holiday cottage insurance also remain solid.
