Hi there, can anybody please advise me on vehicle insurance in the UK while house sitting?
I am nomadic and travelling around the UK doing house sitting and recently decided to buy myself a van to make travelling a bit easier, as well as have the ability to have all my things with me. Some of the sittings are quite far from cities especially out into the beautiful countryside. I am really struggling to find an insurance company who would consider offering me insurance due to the fact that I do not have a permanent address at which my car will be parked during the day or night. For social use purposes, they would expect your car to be in your own driveway at night and will not insure it if that is not the case.
Does anybody have good vehicle insurance with a company that would understand nomadic lifestyle?
Thank you
Hi @Traveller welcome to our Community forum, thank you for joining. We have many nomads on the forum and so hopefully there will be one who can help you with car insurance information.
Welcome again, we hope you enjoy your UK sits and connections and good luck with the car.
Angela and the Team
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That too might be problematic @Petermac as the registered keeper is in effect the owner and main driver and I’m pretty sure that what you’ve suggested would invalidate the insurance at best and be illegal at worst…… might be better for you @Traveller to hire a van on a long term hire…… if a rental/hire company will do it without a permanent address……
Thank you @anon36831737
I do have a registered address as I needed to get one (used a friend’s address) to get my lisence, ID, taxes, banking etc registered, so my car will be registered there.
Unfortunately the issue with the insurance is that they would only insure your vehicle if parked most of the time at your own address (or for most people who have an 8-5pm job, that address is also registered as your day time address).
Any other thoughts or ways around this will be helpful.
Thank you
Annelie
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Dear @Foldor13
Thank you for your response. I recently bought the van and will need it pretty much full time as it is also technically now officially my “storage unit” : )
Thank you for the thought though… my questions is actually, how do other house sitters get around this? I am sure I am not the only person with a vehicle who has a nomadic life?
Thank you
We had no problem for the 18 months we have just spent in UK, Spain and France. We do have an address in the UK but are never there as it is rented out. The only stipulation we had was we were only allowed to drive so many miles a year and we just made it……phew. The car is now sold as we have moved to exploring Central America but we are hoping to buy a RV in the spring and have found a mail box company that we can use to do this legally.
Good luck
Go onto one of comparison sites and check some policies out there. Don’t lie, it always comes back and bites you on the bum. As long as you have an address I can’t see the problem.
W
Thank you so much for your input… I appreciate you sharing this as it just gives me a bit more peace of mind that it is possible.
Thank you @ElsieDownie
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There are many vanlife groups on facebook. some are UK centric. I would post there as these are folks living full time in their vans so they’ve likely faced similar.
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Thank you so much for this @CreatureCuddler, much appreciated!
does anybody out there have car/van insurance that do full time house sitting? how did you manage?
Hey there
I recently bought myself a vehicle, but because I am doing full time house sitting, I am finding it hard to find an insurance company who would insure my vehicle since I am never at my home address. If you have found a way to insure your vehicle and living away from home most of the time, please let me know how you managed this.
Thank you
Hi @Traveller I’ve moved you comment here to the topic you had already created on the insurance question, keeping it altogether will give you a better chance to get the right answers.
thank you… I wasn’t sure if people will respond anymore since they may think this topic is complete, so was exploring to see if I get any new people answering about their personal circumstances. Thank you for re-arranging if you feel this will get better results.
My guess is people aren’t going to have an answer so if you haven’t done so already, I would reach out on FB to the vanlife groups. There you have many people in your exact situation.
@CreatureCuddler, thank you for the suggestion. I have done that as well, I just find it really strange how there are so many nomads doing house sitting and nobody seems to respond. I guess not everybody looks at the forum… I didn’t until I had this problem : )
Thank you either way
i think most don’t look at the forum, many don’t have cars so wouldn’t know how to help even if they look at the forum, or they’re not in the UK so would have no idea even if they have a car and look at the forum. I’ve been house sitting for many years. I got a car a couple months ago for the first time in 20+ years. Most full time traveling/nomads I know don’t have cars.
@CreatureCuddler, do you do house sitting sporadically only then or most of the time?
@Traveller I’m going to close this topic now and wish you luck with your insurance dilema.