The insurance I will deal with in this article is your standard house insurance to protect your property from things like a leak, an earthquake, electricity damage, drunk friends – the basics. You will be required to insure your rental property before moving in, and if you are the homeowner, well, you’ll want to do it to cut down on potential costs down the line.
What does house insurance cover ?
Multi-risk insurance will cover fire, water damage, frozen pipes, natural disaster and storm, burglary and vandalism, broken windows, drunk friends.
House insurance can also cover your furniture.
It won’t cover your cash or your car, those need to be protected by specific insurance.
Is it mandatory to have house insurance in France?
Put simply, it’s not mandatory in every case BUT to avoid great costs if anything happens and not lose any sleep over it, it’s better to be insured. Most landlords require you to purchase insurance before giving you keys.
House insurance as a tenant
As a tenant, most of the time, your landlord will ask you to be covered by insurance.
House insurance as homeowner
If you live in your own house, I refer you to two paragraphs above and advise you to subscribe to one.
If you rent your property, you’ll have to subscribe to a Propriétaire non-occupant insurance. In France, some damages are the responsibility of the tenant and some are the responsibility of the owner. This means that even if you’re not living in the property, you could have to pay for some damages caused.
When you rent your place out, you’ll have two options.
- Either your tenants take their own insurance.
- Or you can subscribe to an insurance on their behalf and have them pay the cost back to you every month.
Why is there a civil liability (responsabilité civile) attached?
The civil liability helps you avoid greater cost to your own finances if any damage is caused by you.
French law dictates that you’re responsible if any harm comes to someone else due to your actions or because of things you own. This means that even if you’re on holiday and an unexpected leak happens and floods the downstairs apartment, you’re responsible and have to make up for the harm done and all damaged goods.
How to get house insurance in France?
Which house insurance should you choose ?
The most classic option is to get home insurance via your bank – they usually offer it when you open your account and the options are cheap and efficient.
You can also get in touch with the usual suspects like AXA, Allianz etc.
However you can also shop around, as with most services in France, there will always be a new startup that will offer you a service you can control via an app – here are a couple:
Finally, you can compare the price of insurers by clicking here :
How does it work ?
Go on the website or on your phone and just fill out the documents for your chosen provider.
It’s quite easy to get house insurance, but quite difficult to cancel it. Make sure you check the terms and conditions of cancelling the contract once you want to leave.
What do you need ?
- A bank account where your monthly payments will be taken from. This means you’ll need a RIB (relevé d’information bancaire)
- Some information about the property (size, date of build, address etc.)
- Details about the furniture in the place.
What to do in the case of a disaster ?
- Alert your insurance as soon as you can, even if the disaster is still ongoing.
- In the case of a burglary, go to the police station to complain and send a copy of the complaint to your insurance.
- Take pictures of the damage.
In every contract, there is what is called a franchise, a minimum amount to pay. If the amount to cover is over that franchise, the franchise is the only amount you’ll pay, usually around €200. Check your house insurance to see your franchise amount.
Tips and tricks:
- Make sure to check what is covered before you call any experts like a plumber. With Juliette, we had this problem, a leak appeared in our toilet. We called a plumber that totally misdiagnosed our issue. It wasn’t covered by our insurance and cost us over 4k.
- When you need costs covered by the insurance, get their permission before calling a specialist. Your insurance will approve the cost in advance and then refer you to one of their craftspeople.
- TAKE DATED PICTURES AND VIDEO of any damages that happen in your home, whether it’s your fault or not.
- Check the cancellation conditions before signing.
