Holiday Home Insurance Lanzarote

Holiday Home Insurance in Lanzarote — Built for Empty Properties

Standard Spanish home insurance assumes an owner-occupied vivienda habitual (main residence). Its unoccupancy clause caps cover after 60 or 90 days of vacancy, which sits badly with a holiday home. A Lanzarote second home belongs on a vivienda secundaria (second-residence) policy. That carries extended-unoccupancy cover, anti-squatter legal cover and, if you let, a tourist-rental endorsement. We set this up in English from our Javea office, for expat owners across Lanzarote and the wider Canary Islands (Islas Canarias).

Lanzarote adds a twist the mainland never sees: the rebuild value itself. Volcanic-island construction means picón stone, flat roofs and cisterns. It costs more per square metre to reinstate than a standard mainland build. Planning approval inside a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve also takes time. The property might be your own winter base, a family bolt-hole or a Vivienda Vacacional let. Either way, the sum insured and the schedule wording have to reflect all of that. We take the use case and the build type together at quote stage, and shape the policy around both.

Volcanic Build, Protected Landscape — What Makes Lanzarote Cover Different

Start with the buildings themselves, because on Lanzarote they drive the policy. The island's houses are typically low-set against the Alisios trade winds, white-rendered with flat roofs, often built with volcanic picón stone walls and sometimes still served by an aljibe rainwater cistern. Reinstating that construction costs more per square metre than a standard mainland build. Lanzarote is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve shaped by César Manrique's design legacy. Building work there needs Cabildo approval and must respect protected-landscape rules. That stretches both the rebuild cost and the timescale. So the single most important step in a Lanzarote quote is setting the insured capital from a genuine island rebuild figure, never a mainland benchmark.

The owner profile is strongly British, with German and other northern European buyers well represented. The season simply does not close. Arrecife airport (ACE) flies direct to dozens of UK airports year-round, and the island receives over 3 million visitors a year. For underwriting, that means Lanzarote homes follow the Canary pattern: short gaps between uses, rather than a Balearic-style winter shutdown. The standard 60/90-day unoccupancy clause still catches owners who lock up for a long stretch. That is why we write second homes with extended-unoccupancy cover regardless.

• Puerto del Carmen: the island's original resort strip — apartment communities with high letting turnover and interlocking community policies.
• Playa Blanca: southern villas with pools — newer stock, strong Vivienda Vacacional demand, seafront salt exposure.
• Costa Teguise: purpose-built resort apartments — the comunidad covers the shared structure, your policy the interior and liability.
• Rural and inland homes: traditional picón construction and aljibe water supply — specialist rebuild values essential.

The geology is not just scenery. The eruptions of 1730–1736 buried a quarter of the island in lava and cinder. Volcanic risk is still part of Lanzarote's insurance picture. Reassuringly, the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros handles it. The fund specifically covers volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and it stands behind every valid home policy. The everyday hazards are smaller but constant: calima dust-storms blowing in from the Sahara, and salt-laden Atlantic wind working on exterior fittings.

Short-term letting runs under the Canary Vivienda Vacacional regime. The island's Manrique-era heritage rules are strictly enforced on exterior alterations. That matters if a claim repair touches the outside of the building. A let property needs the tourist-rental endorsement for guest liability and tenant damage. And as everywhere in the Canaries, premiums carry IGIC rather than mainland IVA. We apply the correct island tax automatically.