Holiday home or empty house, when home insurance stops paying

Tesco Insurance has started selling holiday home and private landlord cover, with Prestige Underwriting handling sales, servicing and claims, The Intermediary reported on 27 October. When a supermarket brand adds a specialist line, the need is real.

The reason is a clause most people never read. The Financial Ombudsman Service says most home insurance policies stop covering theft, malicious damage and escape of water once a home has been unoccupied for a set period, usually 30 or 60 days.

Those are expensive things to lose. The ABI says the average claim for flooding, storms and burst pipes reached £8,548 between April and June 2026, up 12 per cent on a year earlier, while the average theft claim hit a record £5,100, up 27 per cent.

Hold those two facts together. A cottage used at summer weekends, a parent’s house waiting for probate, a flat between tenants: each can drift past the limit over winter, just when pipes freeze.

The ombudsman’s approach offers some comfort. Policies rarely define unoccupied, and where the insurer has not, it may treat a home as occupied if you visited reasonably often, even without sleeping there. If damage happens within the first 30 days of a home standing empty, it will usually expect the claim to be paid.

It is far less sympathetic where a property was abandoned, badly neglected or misdescribed when the cover was bought.

So check three things: how many days your policy allows, what it means by unoccupied, and whether it asks for regular visits, heating left on or water drained down. Keep a simple log of each visit, with dates and photographs. If you let the property, say so, because a standard home policy is not landlord insurance.

Find the unoccupancy clause in your policy this week, before the first frost finds your pipes.