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Greetings everyone,
We Recently bought a retirement home in Playa Hermosa, Guancaste. I am trying to do my homework on purchasing home insurance. If my understanding is correct, I can purchase home insurance through the INS or a private insurer? We will be renting the home on either a short or long term basis, until we retire their full time. Can anyone provide me with information,insight or recommendations into purchasing home insurance.
At the present time, INS, which is a private company, is the only choice for homeowner’s insurance. CAFTA may open other doors but hasn’t yet.
In order to insure the contents of your home, all doors and windows must have metal bars. Even then, INS will exclude cash, jewelery, all electronics, etc. So one wonders just what of value is left.
DavidCMurray,
Thanks for the response. We have already made inquiries for metal bars for the windows and sliding doors, which we will have installed after our closing this month. From what I have gathered so far, the insurance is very reasonable; and it helps if your home is in a gated community with 24/7 security.
It may be that David’s information on home insurance through INS is out of date.
Our home has no bars on either windows or doors and just last month we insured it – and its contents – through INS. And while, as David correctly points out, they would not insure cash or jewelry, they DID insure electronics and even works of art.
We had to itemize any household items valued at $2,000 or more, and those included such things as an iMac computer, an electric piano, a 35mm telephoto camera lens, certain suites of furniture, various works of art and so on. Each of these items, along with the value that WE assigned to them, are individually listed in the policy, which covers virtually everything from earthquakes to landslides to lightning strikes to flooding to robbery to vandalism etc.
Coverage includes a guest house (and contents) on the property, which also lacks window bars.
As for other options, many insurance companies based outside of Costa Rica offer various insurance products, from home to health to travel to… you name it. (Lloyd’s of London once insured Betty Grable’s legs for a million dollars! Great publicity and as it turned out, because of almost hysterical media coverage, a good investment!)
Anything one can do to enhance the security of the home would contribute to reducing the cost of the policy, and yes, being in a gated, guarded community would certainly be one of those things. Metal bars would be another, if you are willing to commit yourself to a virtual prison. A security/alarm system – whether it simply sets off a siren to alert neighbors,:roll: (U.S. spelling there, ‘though it goes against the grain,) or is connected to a central dispatch office is another option, (and based on our own experience, a very affordable one, here in CR.) A number of folks we know insist that the best and most affordable ‘security system’ in CR is owning a dog!
Cheers!
Amongst the 300+ domain names that I have bought over the years I own costaricahealthinsurance.com & costaricahouseinsurance.com & costaricalifeinsurance.com & costaricamedicalinsurance.com so I’m hoping the insurance market opens up well although I’m not exactly sure how I will try and develop these…
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.commartam,
Thank you very much for the information, it was greatly appreciated. We will be bringing a four legged security system with us to CR, we also plan on obtaining a secondary four legged security system once in CR.
Scott’s book covers insurance, coverage and costs very nicely. The problem with insuring the contents is the yearly inventory and evaluation / devaluation of the contents. Document the entire contents with a digital camera too. It’s not a big deal, just time consuming.
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