I am hoping to buy a campervan and use it to travel between and stay in between house sits but getting insurance is proving difficult since the premium relates to a home address and you cannot be covered if the storage place keeps changing. Does anyone have any experience or advice on how to get around this please? Thanks!
I donât own a camper van so I canât speak to the insuring of it specifically. But if you are from the US, perhaps this info will be helpful and if not, maybe someone else will find it useful! My husband and I are full-time travelers and we recently set up residency in South Dakota-they allow people such as us to do this and it is a very simple process.
The mailing services used for this purpose provide addresses that are considered physical addresses, and not just PO boxesâwe have a car registered and insured there based on this address.
Being that SD allows non-residents to register vehicles in the state, it might be possible to use this address to register the vehicle there even if you werenât intending to use it to establish residency. And then you could provide this address for the insurance. Or perhaps you could simply claim this as the address linked with the storage of the car and it wouldnât matter where it is registered.
If you wanted to know more, I use the SD Residency Center and the owner Lynne is super helpful and could probably guide you on whether setting up an address would allow you to do what you need to do with the vehicle. choosesd.com
There are also other mail services that help you directly with registering the car and setting up SD-based insurance You donât necessarily need to use them ,but they usually have helpful info on their sites about this. Here is a link to one of them:
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What country are you based in? In the U.S., thereâs a lot of variation among states when it comes to personal taxation depending on where youâre based, so typically people donât just pick based on their RV. With that specifically, thereâs high variability of insurance rates, registration costs, etc.
Are you in the UK with a UK license?
My suggestion would to go in to an actual broker and speak face to face with a person. They will be a legal way around it, and a good broker will be able to find a solution for you.
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Hi @lightworks
Will you still have a permanent address anywhere whilst travelling, even if youâre not actually living there? If so, could you perhaps just use this? It would seem crazy that campervans cannot be covered if youâre using them for their intended purpose â people donât tend to camp out on their own driveways after all.
If the problem is that you wonât have a permanent address whist travelling, then I think you would probably have the same problem trying to get car insurance as campervan insurance. Would it work for a family member to insure the campervan in their name, using their permanent address as the registered address, with yourself nominated as a named driver?
There must be websites dedicated to âvan lifeâ, which could be a good starting point for finding out what other people do. Please let us know what you find out, as it sounds like a very appealing lifestyle plan!
This link might help âŚ
Your storage place wont be changing but the places you visit will. Your storage place be wherever your hime address is.
Hi, ;Thanks but Adrian Flux plus 2 other campervan specialists told me you need to store the van at the same address. Leaving it elsewhere whilst not sleeping in it is not covered.
Hi Mike
the storage place has to be your home address as it relates to postcode. You need to be sleeping in it or storing it at your postal addressâŚ
Hi
Thanks for this - it could help those in the US but I am in the UK so sadly is not relevant to me. (sorry I should have been clearer)!
Hi, thanks. I can use my brothersâ address but this doesnât help as it means I am only insured overnight whilst staying with him and not on any house sits!
I would go in to a Brokers office and do a face to face. There is a solution to this, and a good broker will want to help you.
Choose one who who is a motor specialist.
If youâll mainly be staying in other peoplesâ homes anyway, is it worth buying and insuring a plain old van, rather than a campervan? Thereâs nothing to stop you creating some kind of fold-out bed in the back of it, and using a camping stoveâŚ
Weird! I am insured with Adrian Flux and specifically told them Iâll use the van to transport myself and my belongings between locations in Europe. There was no mention of the rule youâre describing.
Maybe itâs because mine is a âcamper van in conversionâ not a finished camper? I remember the address where the vehicle is âkeptâ had to be the same as the one on my license, although the address on the V5 was different.
Adrian Flux generally seem to be very good, specialising in vans and understanding that we all use them in different ways. Iâm surprised youâre having this issue. Maybe try calling back and hope a different person gives you a different answer? It seems like an unreasonable restriction, it would mean you could never go visit friends or spenda night in a hotel on a long trip when you get tired of the rain.
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Except you will have then misrepresented yourself to the insurance company, which nullifies your insurance. A camping stove is a fire risk, for example.
If you tell your insurers youâre doing it, it may be OK - my van is insured as âcamper in conversionâ to do precisely that - but then you still have the same question of what address the van is âstoredâ at.
And sounds like a carbon-monoxide poisoning risk. Not to be used inside a car.
I was thinking more about using some kind of awning that attaches to the back of the van, which would give a covered area for cooking, and possibly even sleeping. Iâm really interested to see the outcome of @lightworks insurance issue, as itâs a lifestyle that I have also considered, but I didnât realise that with a campervan you HAVE to be sleeping in it overnight for the insurance to be valid. I had come to the conclusion that buying a car which I could attach an awning to, and potentially sleep in the back of, might be a better solution all round, but could potentially do the same with a regular van, ie. not a campervan. For insurance purposes, I wouldnât have thought that sort of set-up would be viewed any differently to using your car/van to go on a camping trip.
Becca, which country are you in? It seems that every country does things differently.
Iâm UK-based, and would most likely stick with UK sits for trying out the full-time nomad lifestyle!
My van and insurance are UK registered, but I donât actually live there so I donât know how things work. I did hear something about new legal restrictions on vanlifers though.
I think you can often get away with it in an anonymous white van, a bit like you suggested, but sleeping in your car sounds a bit like asking for trouble.
Not to mention the weather! Setting up an awning to cook would be a nightmare in the rain or if itâs cold. My experience has been that the more space you have the easier it is in the longer term.
Whatever you choose, as insurance is unavoidable, I would be careful to make sure it actually covers your intended activities. It would be a shame to spend all that money and when you need it they tell it doesnât cover your specific situation.
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