Seeing flood warnings and people recovering from floods on the news is becoming a regularoccurrence. Cumbria has been the latest place to be hit by flash floods this year. With climate change having quite a large effect at the moment, the amount of homes at risk from flooding is expected to rise.

The Environment Agency is currently predicting that 1 out of every 6 homes is at risk of flooding. With this number expected to rise next year, no doubt we will be seeing even more flood reports on the news.

One of the biggest problems people in areas at risk of flooding are facing is having to buy home insurance, especially if it’s insurance for holiday homes. Because it can cost anywhere up to £40,000 to insurers after a flood claim, you need to factor in expensive insurance when buying any property. Fortunately, there are resources online where you can find out whether your home is at risk.

If you are currently living, or are looking to buy a property in England or Wales, you can visit the Environment Agency’s website where they list flood maps of the UK. If you are a Scottish resident, you can visit the Scottish Environment Protection Agency website for more flood informaton.

If you do own a home or are going to buy a home in a flood risk area, getting your insurance won’t be a simple task. You’ll generally find that as soon as your home has been flooded, your premiums or excesses will rise. You may even find that you are refused a policy renew due to your house being in an area at risk of flooding.

With each flood claim costing insurers around £20,000 to £40,000, you should be prepared to see excesses of aup to £30,000. This is the reason why you should add any expensive insurance costs onto house prices when you are looking to buy a home. Getting second homes insurance can result in even more problems. Due to you leaving the property empty for most of the year, you have to watch for exclusions and high excesses.

I guess this wouldn’t be a problem if you were looking for Spanish house insurance.

Owners of holiday homes here in the UK that rent their property out for a large proportion of the year are expected to be hit by a stealth tax. Around 60,000 holiday home owners will be affected by the new taxes, wth each one being charged an extra £4000 every year.

The stealth taxes will hit those who offer their house for atleast 140 days each year. The holiday home also has to be rented out for atleast 70 of those 140 days that it’s available. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some people renting their houses out for 139 days a year.

The new taxes will be coming into force because, according to the Treasury, the tax rules at the moment break European laws. This is because current holiday home owners are able to receive tax reductions on certain things because they are classed as traders. The new tax laws will mean that they have to pay more taxes as they will now be classes as investors.

Although this isn’t good news for holiday home owners, it is good news for the Government. Due to the large number of home owners being affected, the Government look to make around £20 million each year from the new taxes. Despite the Government making this extra £20 million, it could prove to be worse for the Government than first appears.

This new stealth tax won’t come as good news for holiday home owners. Many already pay high amounts for things like maintenance and holiday cottage insurance. Now due to holiday home owners being charged more, therefore making less profits, many holiday home owners will be forced to close down. According to analysts, the resulting action of the stealth tax could cost the tourism business over £200 million. Not only will money be lost from a reduced amount of tourists, but jobs will also be lost with the increased amount of closing holiday homes. Yet more bad news for the current recession.

If you’re trying to find insurance for holiday homes based in the UK, or maybe overseas property insurance for your holiday home abroad, Schofields is the place to go.

Has owning your own holiday home abroad always been your dream? The ability to just pay for the flights and you can enjoy a 2 week break in places like America, Spain or France, it sounds brilliant. Well you no longer have to dream about it due to the global recession.

As we all know, the global recession has hit many places hard, many people are struggling to pay bills. One of the worst hit countries is America and a large number of people living in Europe have no idea. However, some people will be able to benefit from the troubles they are having, just as long as you have some extra cash.

Currently, house prices around America has fallen, from the highs back in 2005, by around 50% to 60%. With the global recession making everyone tigher with their money, this has led to a huge number of new properties going up for sale, currently there are around 19,000 properties for sale in Kissimmee in the Florida area.

Because of these very low prices, plus the improvement in the exchange rates, buying a property in America has never been more tempting. Hopefully, as more money is pumped into holiday homes, it should help both the US and the UK’s recession position. I say it might do this because as more people put money in the US housing marketing, they will also have to buy overseas property insurance.

The majority of Brits buying a holiday home out their will choose to get their holiday home insurance from companies within the UK because that’s where they mainly live. This means good news for the UK market because more money is being pumped into that as well. However, I wouldn’t have thought many insurance companies will make alot of holiday cottage insurance sales as although property prices in the US are down all over the country, you’ll find it hard to buy a small little cottage like you would find in France or Spain.