Property Insurance

[joeysoap]

got my renewal quote for insurance this morning. Intasure. last year total €122.96 renewal quote €185.71. an increase of €62.75 or 51%. which is just a bit irish, except intasure are based in england, the apt is in portugal so why the huge increase? would be interested from other members who they insure with and ball park premiums.

[laserblazer]

We have ours insured with Loja Império Bonança de Lagoa, by the Fire Station. It's our first year but the premium was around €120 for a 2-bed bungalow on QdP. They have just come back with a Public Liability quote that is quite a bit less that Intasun quoted us.

[joeysoap]

Thanks LB, thats a keen quote. will definitely keep them in mind when shopping around, which is what I am going to do now.

notice a new clause on the policy this year. it will probably apply to all intasure holiday home policys. HH 914 Winter unoccupancy warranty. basically you have to turn the water off at the mains or keep the property heated to 55%F (15%C)at all times. even then the first €500 claim for any burst pipe or escape of water is not covered. Unoccupancy is defined as 48 hours. up until now I think they defined unoccupancy as 60 days.
and to cap it all quote ' this is designed to protect you home from the dreadful effects of a burst pipe etc etc.'
Unbelievable how they can dress up a major change of policy to make it look like they are giving you extra cover. these guys could be politicians.

confess I dont even know where the mains is. is it in the meter box?

[Polli62]

Joey, we are insured with Intasure also for buildings & contents. When we received our renewal 4 weeks ago the premium had increase nearly 50%. We decided to look around for another quote but in the mean time Intasure rang us up asking why we hadn't renewed, we said it was too much and wouldn't be renewing, they then said well let us go through the premium again, and guess what we got it for the same price as the previous year, but within that we deducted £5000 off the contents insurance because we felt that we were over insured on them & we also increased the excess from the original £50 to £150. My advice is ring them and say you are not renewing because of the increased premium and see what they say, or wait until they ring you.
One thing I noticed is that the buldings are now automatically insured for up to 1 million, but unless you have some massive posh villa in a premium area then you are paying through the nose for that figure of coverage.
Re the new endorsement, I too noticed that as well.

[Ma-Ja's]

We are in the middle of shopping around for quotations for all our insurances at the moment. A couple of questions for you all if possible:

1) Do you insure your property for earthquakes? We have found that if you include this cover, the premium tends to increase quite dramatically

2) If you own an apartment in a block, do you individually insure for buildings cover or is this included in the condominium fees?

Your answers would be most welcome

[e-richard]

1. Intasure Policy seems to include earthquakes with no additional penalty for Portugal.
2. Building insurance should be covered by condo fees.

Note my bolding. Not because I am unsure, just to say "double check"

[biffa]

Many Portuguese brokers will sell you anything just to get their commission. If anything happens you can find yourself under insured and won't get a full pay out. Be careful - good insurance cover can never be cheap. Cheap insurance cover is usually exactly what it says on the tin.

[Polli62]

Earthquake cover is included with Intasure Policy but the excess clause on this is quite large, not sure exactly without looking at the policy but its in the thousands of pounds bracket.

[biffa]

Exactly, lots of hidden nasties in the cheap quotes. Basically with insurance you get what you pay for. With some really cheap quotes you may as well not bother. Try make a claim and see where you getj

[Polli62]

Yes but Intasure are not cheap Biffa, the advantage is you can read the policy in English. We have looked at lots of different insurance companies and earthquake cover on all of them has a big excess. We were originally insured for 7 years with Allianz and they too had a big excess on earthquake cover, also their policy was only in German & Portuguese so if you didn't fully understand the lingo you were disadvantaged.

[joeysoap]

1. Intasure Policy seems to include earthquakes with no additional penalty for Portugal.
2. Building insurance should be covered by condo fees.

Intersting point but how would 2 work e-r? if one owner was careless and left doors unlocked and was burgled and the insurance policy increased in cost would everyone be liable?
if an owner let his property out to particulary nasty renters who say in a worse case scenario caused a major fire would the other owners be involved in insurance increases?
and finally if there is no condo fees yet in place - non yet in colina verde as the builder is still paying the pool/garden costs who would be liable - hardly the builder.
I don't know the answer to these questions, merely trying to be devils advocate in this case.

agree with polli62 on cost of intasure. I dont particulary regard a renewal notice for €185 for a one bed apt to be cheap. when you contact them re value of property they just inform you that they cover all property up to a value of 1million, so again agree with polli62 on that score, and as my property isn't even ballpark worth that they are probably the wrong insurer for my purposes. am going to try abbeygate as I seem to recall another member of forum recommending them. they appear to be based in spain but hopefully their policies are in plain english. I don't like that instasure clause where 48 hours classes as unoccupancy from november to march inclusive.I assume their earthquake cover is hh913- subsidence, heave & landslip - if so the excess is €1,000. normal excess for my policy is €150 for both buildings and contents.

[Polli62]

Abbeygates head office is in Gibraltar but they do have offices in the UK.We were insured with them for our UK car years ago and the policy came from a UK office all in English & was also on the UK motor insurance data base. We did have a quote from Abbeygate years ago for buildings & contents but found them expensive.
Scofields & Saga also do insurance for properties abroad.

[malrc]

when you have a formal Condominium it is the Condominiums Administrator role to ensure that there is insurance not just for the individual apartments but also that each apartments insurance covers the common parts.The common parts are defined in the Condominium Agreement and are such things as roofs foundations,walls, patios, water & electricity.

[maccasa]

I tried Abbeygate, Scofields, Intasure, Saga and several others - they all came up with what I considered to be stupid quotes of over €400 for a 5 bed villa with pool.

Try Victoria insurance through Jm Player lda in almancil www.jimplayer.pt - their quote was much lower even including earthquake cover; without it was almost half the rest

[Dial]

It is really interesting the comments regarding Intasure. We had been with them for three years and were very reasonable. However, this years renewal had gone up so much ie by 50% plus lots of additional clauses ie winter occupancy and keeping the temperature at a certain level, I decided to shop around. Intasure rang 5 times regarding renewal quote, each time a slightly less quote!!!! however, we have now taken our insurance out with the AA who do holiday home insurance,(if you go to their website you can get an instant quote) and even with intasures best quote, we still got a lower quote for our apartment with none of these extra clauses and does include earthquake cover, infact the cover value for the contents is more than we had before. We have a mortgage so earthquake cover is compulsory. We have building and contents cover together and paid £130, about 125 euros. When Intasure telephoned yet again It was a pleasure to tell them we had taken our business somewhere else. It seems to me they will be losing a lot of customers and it is certainly worth shopping around.