Home Insurance. Buildings and contents

Hi, I have had a property in Quesada for qpprox 8 years now and just pay whatever Banco Sabadell tell me to pay each year for home insurance buildings and contents. This year I am sure they took out close to 400 euros which is 3 x what I pay in UK. Can anyone recommend who they use and how I go about it. Thanks

jasonw wrote:Hi, I have had a property in Quesada for qpprox 8 years now and just pay whatever Banco Sabadell tell me to pay each year for home insurance buildings and contents. This year I am sure they took out close to 400 euros which is 3 x what I pay in UK. Can anyone recommend who they use and how I go about it. Thanks

Hello Jasonw,

Up until last year we used a company (Zurich) arranged through our Spanish bank (Halifax/ Lloyds) and they never gave us a quote in advance each year and just took the renewal premium from our account.

In the early days of owning our property there was so much to think about that it was convenient to just leave it to renew automatically as it was one less thing to worry about. However, over the years it became the norm in the UK to compare insurances so we asked the bank to tell the insurance company that we would like a renewal price in advance in future and they said that the Spanish insurance company didn't do that (Strange!). They also said they didn't cover for earthquakes which we hadn't known about for all those years.

We had never had an updated policy for 7 years or even a letter to acknowledge our payment. In the end (last year) we changed to a new recommended holiday home insurance company called Intasure (http://www.intasure.com ). They are an English company, have offices in London and they cover automatically for earthquakes and give out renewal quotes in advance. They were also a much better price!


The new quote was about half the price that we were paying. The only difficulty was getting the bank to cancel our old insurance with them... They wanted 3 months notice in advance by 'snail mail' not email, as it had to be hand-signed, but I made them send a confirmation by email to say it was cancelled from the renewal date (and not before) and in the meantime had set up the new insurance with Intasure to come into effect on the renewal date so we were continuously covered - It was a bit of a palaver but we are glad we did it as we will now get notice of the renewal price in advance and can switch if we want to, like we do in the UK.

Hope this helps as it looks like you are in the same position as we were last year.

Jan.

Thanks Jan that's really helpful

If you ever rent out your property or have friends or family staying, you need to make sure that you have Public Liability insurance. I use a company called Schofields who not only insure buildings and contents but also give me Public Liability and loss of rental. They are also very reasonable in their prices

The bank provided insurance, whether in Spain or UK, is always much more expensive than others. For example, I found out in UK my parents were paying £560 a year with Lloyds since they took out a mortgage over 40 years ago. I cancelled that and got them better cover for £180.
Here, in Spain, when you take out insurance, whether it be home or car, you automatically sign up to automatic renewal (it's in the small print on your policy). Ours was almost €300 a year for buildings only, no contents cover on that. I wrote to the bank to cancel but had no acknowledgement. I then visited our branch and had to fill in a form (they never told me this) to cancel the insurance as I got it cheaper (about €200 a year buildings and contents). They also told me it was up to me to contact the insurance company not the other way round every year. I now ensure I phone 3 months before the renewal date, for both car and house, to get a quote. If it is too high, I always say I will look around and, magically, the price comes down. For example, my car insurance with Linea Directa in the first year was €275. Next year the premium was €350 and I said I would check with Mapfre and the price came down to the €275 again. This year, the premium was quoted as over €400 which I refused and eventually had it cut to €284. Mind you, it was the same in UK where premiums went up each year. Axa insurance quoted me £367 one year but I could get it online with the same company at £280. The phone adviser wouldn't give me that price so I did it online as a new customer and got the reduced price, all with the same company.
For a 3 bedroom, furnished house in Spain you shouldn't be paying more than about €235 a year (about £195) unless, of course, you are adding on all those old master paintings and the stack of gold bars hidden under the bed.

I was originally with Solbank's recommended insurance company - and the their charge went up to over €400 a year, too! I went into Solbank to complain - and amazingly they found me a policy in the €200's!!

Yesterday I received a "cold call" from Linea Directa, (I have my car insured through this company) offering me a far better deal - around €200 for far more cover.

My old policy does not renew for another few months, and even if I cancel it I am still liable to pay the full policy amount! What is the best way of giving this 2month notice of cancellation? In person or by letter?

Sandra wrote:I was originally with Solbank's recommended insurance company - and the their charge went up to over €400 a year, too! I went into Solbank to complain - and amazingly they found me a policy in the €200's!!

Yesterday I received a "cold call" from Linea Directa, (I have my car insured through this company) offering me a far better deal - around €200 for far more cover.

My old policy does not renew for another few months, and even if I cancel it I am still liable to pay the full policy amount! What is the best way of giving this 2month notice of cancellation? In person or by letter?

When I cancelled ours I emailed first saying that I wanted the insurance cancelled from the renewal date (as we had paid up to then) but they wanted a signed paper copy at least two months in advance, so emailed the letter again with a note explaining that a signed copy of the letter was in the post. I also asked that they emailed confirmation when they received the cancellation letter.

When they emailed saying they had received the letter in the post, I then emailed back to get a confirmation in writing that the insurance was still valid until ____ (the date of the renewal).

In the intervening time I had asked the new insurance to start the day before the last one ran out, that way we were consecutively covered.

It's a bit of a palaver but the confirmation in writing was necessary to be reassured, as it's important that we were not uninsured at any time. I am a bit of a dot the i's and cross the T's type of person, otherwise I worry and can't just trust that these kind of things have been done.


Hope this helps.

Jan

Jan