Insuring your French holiday home: the complete guide for foreign owners

French law does not force you to insure a detached house you own and use yourselves. If the property is a flat in a co-ownership, the rules change: the ALUR law of 2014 requires every co-owner, resident or not, to carry at least civil liability insurance. Your syndic can ask for proof of it, and some now do.

Two practical obligations sit on top of that. A French mortgage lender will require buildings cover before releasing funds. And if you let the property on a standard residential lease, your tenant must insure against rental risks; holiday lets follow looser rules, covered further down this page.

Even where nothing is compulsory, going without cover is a poor bet. If a fire starts in your empty house and spreads to the neighbour's, the liability is yours. A proper French home policy costs a few hundred euros a year against that exposure.

Most French multi-risk home policies assume someone lives in the house for most of the year. Read the small print and you will usually find an unoccupancy clause, the clause d'inhabitation: once the home stands empty beyond a set period, often 30, 60 or 90 days, theft cover is reduced or suspended, and sometimes water damage too.

A holiday home shut from October to May can pass that limit without the owner noticing anything. The claim is then refused on a clause nobody had read.

The fix is straightforward. Declare the property as a second home from the start and choose a contract written for intermittent occupation. Then check the conditions attached to it: some insurers require shutters closed, water turned off at the mains, or a periodic visit by a neighbour or an agency. Those are contractual commitments, not suggestions.

Letting the house for July and August changes the risk, and most insurers want to know about it. Holiday tenants almost never carry French insurance of their own, and a security deposit will not stretch to a serious water leak.

Three routes exist. You can extend your own policy to seasonal letting, usually the simplest option. You can add a waiver-of-recourse clause (abandon de recours), under which your insurer agrees not to pursue the tenant after a loss. Or you can require guests to show villégiature liability cover, which many French holidaymakers hold through their own home policy but foreign guests rarely do.

Guarantees offered by booking platforms are not a substitute. They sit outside French insurance law, apply their own conditions and pay at their own discretion. Treat them as a backstop, never as the cover itself.

The policy pays out against the contents capital you declared, so the figure matters. Declare too little and the proportional rule applies: the insurer reduces every payout in the same proportion as the under-declaration.

Holiday homes hold more than owners think. Furniture bought over fifteen summers, bikes, a paddleboard, the television, linen and kitchenware add up quickly. Walk through the house once, room by room, and price it honestly.

Photograph everything and keep invoices for anything of value, stored outside the house or online. Check the caps on valuables and jewellery, which are often low in standard contracts. If the furnishings are recent, ask about new-for-old settlement (rééquipement à neuf) rather than depreciated value.

The Var takes its weather seriously. Autumn Mediterranean storms can drop months of rain in a few hours, small rivers flood fast, and long dry summers bring wildfire risk and cracking clay soils.

Cover splits in two. Storm, hail and snow damage falls under the standard tempête guarantee found in any multi-risk policy. Flood, mudslide, drought-related subsidence and earthquake fall under the state-backed catastrophes naturelles regime, funded by a levy built into every French property premium.

The cat nat regime only pays once the government publishes a decree recognising the event for your commune, which can take weeks. A fixed statutory excess applies, currently €380 for homes and higher for drought subsidence, and the insurer cannot waive it.

Wildfire is handled as ordinary fire cover, with no decree needed. What matters there is the rebuilding capital and whether outbuildings, terraces and pool equipment are included.

French policies set short deadlines. Theft must be declared within two working days, most other losses within five, and natural-disaster claims within thirty days of the official decree. The clock does not stop because you are in Manchester or Amsterdam.

Prepare before anything happens. Leave keys with someone local who can open the house to an insurer's expert. After a loss, photograph the damage before touching anything, keep damaged items rather than throwing them out, and gather whatever invoices you have.

This is where a local broker earns its keep. ASSUDIRE declares the claim, follows the file with the insurer and the loss adjuster, and keeps you informed in English, with a reply within two working hours. You deal with one office at Port Fréjus rather than a call centre in a language you half follow.

A serious quote needs a short list of facts: the address, year and type of construction, living surface, how many weeks a year the house is occupied, whether you let it, the contents value and, if you have one, your current policy for comparison.

ASSUDIRE is an independent brokerage, in business at Port Fréjus since 2013. The team, Sylvie, Margot, Lucas and Cyril, compares around thirty insurers and works in English and Italian. Advice is free, and the firm holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Google from 24 reviews. If your holiday base is a mobile home on a Var campsite rather than a house, that is a separate contract: see mobile home insurance.

Send your details through the contact page, book an appointment, or call +33 4 89 78 15 49. You can also write to info@assudire.fr.