Who will arrange your property insurance in Spain
A Spanish apartment usually insures for somewhere between 300 and 800 € a year, and it is one of the running costs that carries on whether you are here or not. A villa costs more, especially with a pool or a garden. This is one of the jobs we do not do ourselves: we introduce you to a specialist, we are on the call with you, and we go through the offer together before you sign anything. What we will not do is tell you which policy to buy.
The four things a Spanish owner is usually talking about
On the first call with a specialist you will hear four terms, and they are not interchangeable. Knowing which one is being discussed is most of what stops you from paying twice or assuming you are covered when you are not.What follows is the vocabulary, not a description of your policy. What any individual policy actually covers, and what it excludes, is decided by its own wording, and that is a conversation to have with the specialist and not with an estate agent.
| What it is called | What it is about | What to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Continente | The building itself: the structure, the walls, the roof, the fixed installations, the fitted kitchen and bathrooms, the things that stay when you move out. On a house it usually reaches further than people expect and takes in the terraces, the driveway, the boundary walls, the fences and gates, the garage, an outbuilding and the pool with its plant. Buyers routinely assume everything outside the front door is excluded and then insure it a second time. | What figure is it insured for, and how was that figure arrived at. It is a rebuilding question, not the price you paid. On a house, ask explicitly which of the outdoor structures are inside that figure and which are not. |
| Contenido | The contents: furniture, appliances, everything that is not fixed. | What total was assumed. If you are furnishing a property from empty, the number that made sense in year one is wrong by year two. |
| Responsabilidad civil | Liability, for damage your property causes to somebody else. On a coast built on apartments this is mostly water reaching a neighbour. | Whether it is included and up to what limit. It is the part people notice least and need most. |
| The comunidad’s own policy | The building’s policy, paid out of the community fees you already pay: the common areas, the pool, the gardens, the lift, the shared installations. | Ask the administrator what it covers and where its boundary with your own flat runs. You are paying for it either way. |
Does the community not already insure my apartment?It insures the building and the common areas, and you are paying for that inside your community fee. It is not the same thing as insuring your own flat and what is in it. Ask the administrator for the boundary in writing, and take that answer to the specialist rather than guessing at it.
What is the difference between continente and contenido?Continente is the building and everything fixed to it. Contenido is what you would take with you. Most owners need to think about both, and the two are priced separately, so a quote that looks cheap may simply be covering less.
What a Spanish home policy normally covers
Ask an insurer what is covered and you are handed a document. These are the headings actually inside it, in the order they matter for a property on this coast. Each one is a question to put to the specialist, not a promise made by this page: whether your policy carries it, and up to what limit, is decided by its own wording.
- Escape of waterA pipe, a flexible hose under a sink, a washing machine, a seal that has failed. It is the most common claim on this coast by a distance and the most expensive one in an apartment block, because the damage rarely stays in your own flat. Ask whether finding the leak is covered as well as repairing the damage, and what happens when the pipe turns out to be a shared one.
- Fire, smoke and explosionThe one everybody assumes and nobody reads. Worth asking what is included beyond the fire itself: smoke damage to everything that did not burn, and the cost of the door the fire service had to come through.
- Storm, wind and floodThe rain here arrives in short violent episodes rather than steadily, and terraces and flat roofs are where it finds a way in. Ask where the policy draws the line between storm damage and maintenance, because that line is where these claims are actually argued.
- Earthquake and the extraordinary risksIn Spain these sit with the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros rather than with your insurer, and the levy for it is a line on your premium whether you noticed it or not. Ask what stays inside the ordinary policy and what is passed across, so you know who you would be claiming from before you need to.
- Theft, and the damage done getting inBoth the things taken and the broken door or window. On a property that is empty most of the year, ask what the policy expects of you in return: locks, an alarm, shutters closed, and how long the property may stand unoccupied before any of it stops applying.
- Public liabilityDamage your property does to somebody else, which in an apartment block means water reaching the flat below far more often than anything dramatic. Ask for the limit rather than only for whether it is included.
- Home emergency assistanceAsistencia en el hogar, and it is the line nobody reads. Most Spanish home policies already include a round-the-clock call-out for the emergencies: a plumber for a burst pipe, a locksmith when a lock fails, an electrician when the power goes, boarding up after a break-in, usually with a set amount of labour included. You are paying for it inside the premium already. Find the number, put it in your phone before you need it, and know that we are not the only people you can call at midnight.
None of that describes your policy. It is the list to go through with the specialist one line at a time, and the reason we publish it is simple: an owner who knows the headings ends up with a better policy than one who asks for the cheapest quote and signs whatever comes back.
A warranty is not insurance, and a bank guarantee is not either
Three different protections get called the same thing in conversation, and they do completely different jobs. Two of them you get automatically and cannot buy. The third you buy and nobody gives you.
| What it is | Where it comes from | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| The developer warranty on a new build | Ten years on the structure, three years on the installations, one year on the finish. It comes with the building and you pay nothing extra for it. | It is not insurance. It answers for how the building was built, not for a burst pipe, a burglary or your neighbour’s ceiling. |
| The bank guarantee on a new build | By law every payment made before completion has to be covered by a bank guarantee issued in your name and against your specific payments. | It is not insurance either, and it stops existing once the property is finished and yours. It protects the money, not the property. |
| A resale property, for comparison | No warranty at all. The seller answers only for hidden defects he knew about and concealed. | Which is exactly why the technical inspection before the purchase matters more on a resale property, and why the policy carries more afterwards. |
| The insurance policy | You arrange it, you pay for it every year, and it starts when you take the property over. | It is not a substitute for either of the two above, and neither of them is a substitute for it. |
One warning that belongs here rather than in the small print. On a new build your lawyer asks for an individual guarantee certificate in your name, for your payments, and not the developer’s group policy, and he verifies it before any money leaves after the reservation. A group policy shown to you as proof is not the same document, and the distinction has cost people their deposits.
I have a ten-year warranty on the new build. Do I still need insurance?They cover different things. The warranty answers for construction: the structure, the installations, the finish. It does nothing about water damage you cause to the flat below, a break-in, or a storm. Most owners hold both, and on a resale property there is no warranty to hold at all.
When the property is empty for most of the year
This is the situation almost every Czech owner on this coast is actually in, and it is the one that changes the conversation with an insurer. A home that somebody sleeps in every night and a home that is opened for four weeks in August are not the same risk, and an insurer prices them differently.You do not need to work out the rules for yourself. What you need to do is tell the specialist the truth about how the property will be used, because an answer given loosely at the start is the answer that gets looked at again when something happens.And underneath all of it sits one clause that does the real damage, so it is better named here than discovered later. Spanish home policies define a run of consecutive days after which the property counts as unoccupied, and in this market that line commonly falls somewhere between thirty and sixty days. Past it the cover can be cut back, theft in particular can drop out altogether, and on some wordings the policy simply does not respond unless the situation was declared when the policy was written. It is not a trick and it is not hidden. It sits in a part of the document nobody reads, and it is the most common reason a claim on a Czech-owned apartment on this coast is refused.
- Say how many months a year it will stand emptyNot a guess and not the optimistic version. Unoccupancy is one of the first things asked about and one of the first things checked afterwards.
- Say whether somebody checks it, and how oftenA property with nobody looking at it between visits behaves differently from one that gets opened, aired and inspected. If a regular check is part of the arrangement, that is a thing worth saying out loud.
- Say what security is actually installedAn alarm connected to a monitoring service is the usual recommendation for an apartment you are not in year-round, and a basic alarm with a service runs to tens of euros a month. That is the alarm company’s price and not ours.
- Say whether you will let itA policy written for a family home is not written for paying guests. If renting is even a possibility, raise it now rather than after the first booking.
- Keep the renewal date somewhere you will see itA policy that renews silently every year is a policy nobody re-reads, and the sum insured that was right when the property stood empty is not right once it is furnished. There is a practical reason to hold the date as well as a tidiness one: a Spanish policy rolls over automatically unless you give notice, and the notice period is normally around a month before the renewal date. Miss that window and you are in for another year at whatever the insurer decided the new premium should be. Find the exact number of days in your own wording, put the deadline in the calendar rather than the renewal date itself, and you keep the option of moving.
And one thing we will not do, which is sell you a policy on the back of the okupas headlines. Our own published figures put reported occupation cases in the province of Málaga at about 0,035 % of properties in 2025, against roughly 0,044 % for Czechia on the comparable offences. The Czech number is the higher one. Empty property is worth thinking about carefully for reasons of water, weather and maintenance, and not because of a fear our own research has already taken apart.
Is the property still covered if nobody is there for six months?That depends entirely on the policy wording, which is why it has to be discussed before the policy is signed rather than after. Tell the specialist honestly how much of the year the property will be empty and what checks and security are in place. Anyone who answers this question without asking you those things is not answering it.
Two situations where the answer changes
A mortgage and a renting each change what the policy has to do, and both are places where buyers assume something and find out later that they assumed wrong.
What buyers assumeWhat to do instead
- The bank arranges the insurance, so that part is handled
- A lender will want the property insured, and it will usually have its own product to offer you. Whether you have to take that specific product, and on what terms, is a question to put to the bank and to your lawyer in writing before you sign the mortgage, not something to assume in either direction. It is a normal question and a bank that will not answer it plainly has told you something.
- The valuation the bank charges me for is a kind of survey
- It is not. On a mortgage here the bank pays its own fees and the one thing you pay for is the valuation, which exists to tell the bank what the property is worth. It is not a technical inspection and it is not an insurance assessment.
- My home policy covers it when I let it to guests
- A policy written for a home is written for a home. If you are going to rent out the property, short-term or otherwise, say so when the policy is arranged. Whether you can let it at all is a separate question that depends on Andalusian rules, the municipality and the community, and that one has its own page.
Do I have to take the insurance my Spanish bank offers me?Ask the bank that question in writing and put it to your lawyer before you sign, and do it early enough that the answer can still change what you do. We are not going to tell you what a lender may or may not require, because that is a legal question and we are not lawyers.
Who does what, and where we stop
Some things we handle ourselves, for others we have specialists we trust, and insurance is firmly in the second group. We stay your main point of contact and we make sure it all joins up. This is what that means in practice, line by line.
| What happens | Who does it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Before the policy exists | ||
| Briefing the specialist | Arevont | We tell him what the property is, what you paid, how it will be used and how much of the year it will stand empty, so the first quote is aimed at your situation rather than at an average. |
| Being on the call | Arevont, with you | Explained to you plainly. You are not working out Spanish insurance vocabulary live on a phone call with somebody who sells it. |
| Reading the offer with you | Arevont, with you | We go through it together, and the first thing we look at is whether the sum insured has any relationship to what you actually paid and what is actually in the property. |
| The decision itself | ||
| Recommending which policy to buy | Nobody at Arevont | We do not do this and we will not be talked into it. Insurance is a regulated product, we are not brokers, and the advice has to come from the specialist who is qualified to give it. |
| Signing the policy | You, with the specialist | It is your contract with the insurer. We are not a party to it and we are not on it. |
| Afterwards | ||
| The renewal date | Arevont, in your file | We keep it, so the year the sum insured needs revisiting is a conversation rather than a surprise. |
| The call when something happens | Arevont first, then the insurer | You call us here on the coast. We are not the ones who decide a claim and we would never suggest otherwise, but you are not starting from a call centre in a language you do not speak. |
| Getting into the property after a leak | Arevont, if we hold keys | Somebody has to be able to open the door on the day. That is property management and it is a separate, paid service rather than part of this one. |
| The repair itself | Tradesmen we work with | After a claim somebody still has to fix it. We have the people and we can coordinate them. |
| Anything about tax on the property | Your lawyer or a tax adviser | Not ours and never presented as ours. Insurance and tax get discussed in the same breath and they are not the same conversation. |
What the specialist will ask you for
Almost all of this is paperwork you already have from the purchase, and almost all of it goes electronically from Czechia. Having it in one place before the first call is the difference between one conversation and three.| What is needed | Who is asking for it | How it usually goes |
|---|---|---|
| Who you are | ||
| Your NIE and identification | The insurer, as the policyholder’s identification. | A scan. You will already have the NIE from the purchase, because you could not have completed without it. |
| A Spanish bank account | The insurer, for the annual direct debit. | Usually the same account the community fees and the utilities come out of. |
| What the property is | ||
| The deed, or the purchase price | The specialist, as the starting point for the sums insured. | Electronically. Your lawyer has it. Note that what you paid and what it would cost to rebuild are two different numbers, and the specialist will say which one he is working from. |
| Built area and year of construction | The insurer, for the building cover. | From the deed or the catastro reference. Do not estimate it from a listing. |
| Apartment or villa, and what comes with it | The insurer. A pool, a garden and an independent house are not the same risk as a flat in a gated block. | One sentence, but it is the sentence that moves the price most. |
| What the community policy covers | The specialist, so you are not buying cover twice. | Ask the administrator. This is the one item on the list you have to go and get rather than already hold. |
| How it will be used | ||
| How many months a year it stands empty | The insurer, and it is one of the first questions. | Answer it honestly, including the version where the plan changes. A loose answer at the start is the answer that gets read closely later. |
| Whether anyone checks it while you are away | The insurer, and the specialist when he is choosing what to quote. | If a management arrangement is in place, say so and say how often. |
| What security is installed | The insurer. An alarm connected to a monitoring service is the usual recommendation for a property that is not lived in year-round. | Say what is actually there, not what is planned. |
| Whether you intend to rent it out | The insurer, and it changes what has to be covered. | Raise it even if it is only a possibility. Adding it later is normal, discovering it after a claim is not. |
| Only if there is a mortgage | ||
| The lender’s requirements | Your bank, if the purchase is mortgaged. | Get them in writing from the bank before you sign, and give them to the specialist at the start rather than at the end. |
Where this sits in the purchase
The full purchase is fifteen steps from the first call to the keys. Insurance is one of the jobs in the handover, alongside the keys, the inventory and the utility transfers, and then it becomes an annual thing that carries on for as long as you own the property.Steps 14 and 15 of 15
- Notary, keys and the handoverCompletion daySigning at the notary is not the end of it. The property still has to be taken over and made usable, and insurance is one of six jobs in that handover: the keys and the condition check, the inventory and the documentation, electricity, water and internet, the insurance, the furnishing, and the repairs and access cards. We are there on the day and we stay on it until you have the keys.
- And then every year after thatFrom day oneInsurance is on our published list of the things you can come back to us with after the keys, next to the utilities, the tax deadlines, the tradesmen and the property management. It is also one of the annual costs, alongside the IBI, the community fees, the refuse charge and the energy. We keep the renewal date in your file so it does not roll over unexamined for five years.
Arranging it yourself, or with us
The same policy, arranged two ways.| On your own | With Arevont | |
|---|---|---|
| Who finds the specialist | The bank offers you its own product at the mortgage signing, or you search from Czechia and pick from what comes up. | We introduce you to a specialist we work with, and you are free to bring your own instead. |
| What language it happens in | Spanish, or English if you are lucky, with somebody who sells insurance for a living. | Czech, on a call we are on with you. |
| Whether the sum insured makes sense | Nobody checks it. A number gets entered and it renews quietly every year afterwards. | We read the offer with you and look at whether the figures have any relationship to what you actually paid and own. |
| The overlap with the community policy | Easy to pay twice, and just as easy to assume you are covered when the boundary runs the other way. | We ask the administrator what the building’s policy covers before you buy a second one on top of it. |
| Who you call when something happens | A call centre, from Czechia, about a property nobody has looked at in three months. | Us, here on the coast. We do not decide claims, but you are not starting the conversation alone. |
| What our part costs you | Nothing directly. The premium is the same premium either way. | Nothing. The premium is the insurer’s and the coordination is not billed. |
A pipe goes in February and you are in Brno
This is not a client story and we are not presenting it as one. It is the shape of an ordinary problem in an apartment that is empty for most of the winter, put in order, so you can see which parts of it are actually ours. Nothing here is a promise about what an insurer will decide.- Somebody noticesOn an empty flat that is usually the neighbour below, the community administrator, or a scheduled check. Which of those three it is depends entirely on whether anyone is looking at the property between your visits.
- Somebody opens the doorA claim that cannot be inspected because nobody has keys is a claim that sits still. If we hold keys under a management arrangement, that part happens the same day. If nobody does, it happens when you can fly.
- The report goes in, in SpanishYou call us, we help you get it reported, and the specialist who arranged the policy deals with the insurer. This is the part where having arranged the policy through somebody reachable stops being an abstraction.
- Two policies get looked at, not oneWater that has reached the flat below involves your liability cover and, depending on where the pipe was, the community’s policy too. This is exactly why the boundary between the two is worth establishing on the day you buy rather than the day something bursts.
- And then somebody has to fix itA settled claim is not a dry flat. The repair is tradesmen, scheduling and access, and that is the part we can coordinate for you whichever way the claim goes.
Notice how little of that is about the policy document, and how much of it is about somebody being able to get into the property.
How much does it cost?
Our part is not billed to you. We brief the specialist, we are on the call, we go through the offer with you and we keep the renewal date. None of that appears on an invoice, on this page or on any of the others in the after-keys group.The policy itself is a cost you pay to the insurer, and it is in our published annual-cost table at 300 to 800 € a year. That figure is for an apartment. For a villa it is higher, and our own note on that table says so: the IBI, the insurance, the energy and the maintenance all rise, and a pool or a garden is added on top. We do not publish a villa figure because we do not have one we would stand behind, and a made-up range on a page about insurance would be a strange place to start being unreliable.Two adjacent numbers, so the picture is honest. Community fees run from 900 to 6.000 € a year and they already include the building’s own policy, so part of what a building is insured for is money you are spending whether you think about it or not. And a basic alarm with a monitoring service costs tens of euros a month, which is the alarm company’s price and not ours, quoted here because it is the security arrangement most often recommended for a property that stands empty.Part of all of this runs whether you use the property or not. That is true of the insurance, the community fees and the standing charges on the utilities alike, and it is worth building into the number you have in your head before you buy rather than discovering it in the first February.
We charge nothing for coordination. You pay the insurance premium to the insurer, not to us.
What we are not, and what we will not tell you
We are not insurance brokers and we do not give insurance advice. We do not tell you which policy to buy, what sum to insure for, or whether a particular exclusion matters in your case. Insurance is a regulated product and that advice has to come from somebody qualified to give it. What we do is introduce you to a specialist, sit on the call with you, read the offer with you and stay reachable afterwards.You are free to arrange it entirely without us. Plenty of owners use a broker at home, or take the product their Spanish bank offers at the mortgage signing, and neither of those is a mistake. If you do, the one thing worth doing is checking the sum insured against what you actually paid and what is actually in the property, because that is the number nobody revisits.We will not sell you a policy on the strength of the okupas coverage. Our own published research puts reported occupation cases in the province of Málaga at roughly 0,035 % of properties in 2025, against about 0,044 % in Czechia on the comparable offences, and it is the Czech figure that is higher. Buy cover for reasons of water, weather, liability and theft. Not because of a headline our own numbers have already answered.And keep the three protections apart in your head. A developer warranty of ten years on the structure, three on the installations and one on the finish is not insurance. A bank guarantee covering your pre-completion payments is not insurance either, and on a new build your lawyer asks for an individual certificate in your name rather than the developer’s group policy. A resale property carries no warranty at all beyond hidden defects the seller knew about and concealed.Rules in Spain change and they differ by location, by type of property and by how it is used. Treat this page as an explanation of how the pieces fit together, not as a substitute for advice on your specific purchase and your specific policy.
Frequently asked questions about property insurance
- How much does insuring a property in Spain cost?
- Our published annual-cost table puts it at 300 to 800 € a year for an apartment, and says plainly that the price depends on the type of property, the extent of the cover and the value insured. A villa costs more, particularly with a pool or a garden, and we do not publish a figure for one because we do not have one we would stand behind.
- Is insurance compulsory in Spain?
- That is a legal question and we are not the right people to answer it, so we will not. What we can tell you is where it comes up in practice: a lender will want the property insured, and your community will already be insuring the building out of the fees you pay. Put the compulsory-or-not question to your lawyer, and do it before the mortgage rather than after.
- When should the policy be arranged?
- At the handover. On our fifteen-step process the insurance sits with the keys, the condition check, the inventory and the utility transfers, and on the ownership timeline it is in the first days rather than something to get to later.
- Can I keep the insurer I already use in Czechia?
- For a property in Spain you will normally be dealing with a Spanish policy and a Spanish insurer, and the specialist can tell you what your options actually are. What matters more than the flag on the letterhead is that whoever holds the policy can be reached, in a language you speak, on the day something goes wrong.
- Does insurance cover okupas?
- It depends on the policy and it is a question for the specialist, not for us. What we would say first is that the fear is out of proportion to the numbers: our own published research puts the reported rate in the province of Málaga slightly below the Czech one. What genuinely helps an empty property is an alarm connected to a monitoring service and somebody checking on it, which is also what an insurer wants to hear about.
- Who deals with it if something happens while I am in Czechia?
- You call us. We help you get it reported and the specialist who arranged the policy deals with the insurer. We do not decide claims and we would never pretend to, but you are not starting the process from a call centre in Spanish, and if we hold keys somebody can get into the property the same day.
