Irish buyers have been part of the Algarve's holiday-home market for decades, and the property itself is not the hard part of insuring it — the pattern of use is. A house that stands empty for eight or nine months of the year needs a different policy from the one a full-time resident holds, and the difference matters most exactly when nobody is there to notice.
What we analyse in a second home
A second home is a different risk from the house you live in: it stands empty for weeks, someone else checks it, and it is sometimes let. These are the points we examine before any proposal.
Periods of unoccupancy
How long and how often the house stands empty. Unoccupancy can affect the acceptance of the risk, the security conditions and how certain covers apply, so the use of the property has to be declared correctly.
Visits, keyholders and security
Who checks the house and how often, what happens to water and electricity while it is closed, and which security measures are in place.
Letting, even occasionally
Whether the house is lent or let, to whom and how often. Letting changes the risk and must be declared before it starts.
Valuables kept in the house
Jewellery, watches and art left in a second home are often limited or excluded; where they matter, they need to be insured on terms that cover them.
Rebuild cost and natural perils
The same analysis as for a main residence: sums insured, underinsurance, and the local exposure to storm, flood, fire and earthquake.
Liability and claims at a distance
Liability to guests and third parties, and how a claim is handled when the owner is in another country.
What we need to prepare a proposal
- Address, year of construction and gross area.
- An estimate of the rebuild cost, which we review with you.
- Weeks of use per year, and whether the house is lent or let.
- Who checks the house, and the security in place.
- Contents and valuables kept there, and your current policy, if any.
We work with second homes in Portugal and Spain with a rebuild value from €500,000. All cover is subject to the insurer’s acceptance of the risk and to the terms of the policy issued.
Insurers and specialist partners
Adler & Rochefort works with insurers and specialist partners in the protection of private wealth, including Hiscox, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, Hispania and Innovarisk. The choice of solution depends on the characteristics of the property, the sums insured, its use and the underwriting conditions available. All cover is subject to the insurer’s acceptance of the risk and to the terms of the policy.
The occupancy question comes first
Most Portuguese home-insurance wordings suspend theft cover and restrict water-damage cover once a property has been unoccupied for a stated number of consecutive days — commonly 30, 60 or 90, depending on the insurer. A holiday home used for a few weeks in summer and left otherwise empty is written correctly as a second home, at a modest loading over a permanent-residence policy. Written incorrectly — insured as if someone lives there year-round, because that was the easiest box to tick when the policy was first arranged — the cover can stop responding to precisely the two events most likely to happen while the house stands empty.
A named key-holder helps in practice as well as on paper: some insurers will maintain full theft cover on a seasonal property where someone local can attend if something is wrong, and it is also what makes a 24-hour assistance line usable when a pipe fails in February and you are in Dublin or Cork.
Letting the property changes the risk again
If the house is let out, whether through a management company or independently, Portugal's Alojamento Local (AL) registration and insurance requirements apply, and a standard private residential policy does not respond to a claim connected with paying guests. That is a different exposure from a family holiday home: more people through the door, a commercial liability question, and a policy that has to say so rather than quietly carrying a commercial risk under private-use cover.
Irish-owned property in the Algarve?
Tell us whether it is a straight holiday home or one you let out, and roughly how many months of the year it stands empty. We will tell you what that changes about the cover.
Getting the sum insured right
The insured amount on a Portuguese home policy has to reflect the cost of rebuilding the property, not its purchase price or its current market value — and on a holiday home bought some years ago, the figure carried over from the original policy is one of the things most likely to have gone stale. Under the proportional rule (regra proporcional), a property insured for less than its correct rebuild value has every claim settled in the same reduced proportion, not just a total loss. See the proportional rule and outdated insured values for how that works and how to check your own figure.
Pools, in particular, are close to standard on Algarve holiday homes and need to be declared and valued separately rather than assumed to be folded into the main building figure.
Adler & Rochefort is a commercial brand of Ownizo, Unipessoal Lda., registered with the Portuguese Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority (ASF) under no. 425591790/3. General information only, not personalised advice; occupancy conditions and Alojamento Local requirements vary by insurer and by property.
More on this subject: Insurance for Irish Residents in Portugal · The proportional rule and outdated insured values · Home insurance in Portugal