Park homes are the last genuinely affordable way to own your own four walls in a lot of places — and one of the easiest ways to end up catastrophically underinsured. Almost nothing about insuring one works like insuring a house, and the people selling the policies rarely volunteer why.
If you’ve tried to get a quote and the comparison sites spat out one lonely result, or the standard quote form didn’t have an option that fit, that’s not you doing it wrong. It’s structural. Park homes sit in a weird legal and insurance gap, and the entire market is built around that gap.
Why normal home insurance quietly doesn’t work
Three things break the moment you try to insure a park home like a house:
- It probably isn’t legally a house. Depending on where you are, a park home is often classified as a caravan or a mobile structure. Standard home policies are priced around brick-and-mortar assumptions — permanent foundations, mains drainage, a rebuild cost that makes sense. A park home fails those assumptions on multiple counts.
- Rebuild cost means something different. You don’t rebuild a park home on its pitch the way you rebuild a house. You replace it, tow it, or scrap it. That changes the whole maths of what you’re insuring.
- The market is specialist and broker-driven. It’s not a mass-market product with price competition. It’s a small pool of underwriters who each have their own rules about age, materials, and location. That’s why comparison engines are close to useless here.
What a park home policy actually covers
A decent specialist policy normally bundles most of this:
- The home itself — the structure, usually on a new-for-old replacement basis if it’s under a certain age, and on a market value or indemnity basis if it isn’t.
- Contents — everything inside, sometimes as a separate sum insured you have to justify.
- Public liability — usually a few million, and near-universally demanded by the site owner under the pitch agreement.
- Named perils — fire, storm, escape of water, theft, malicious damage, and often accidental damage as an optional extra.
- Alternative accommodation — if the home becomes uninhabitable after a claim.
- Add-ons — steps, decking, skirting, sheds, outbuildings, sometimes solar panels. These have their own limits and they’re a classic source of claim disputes.
The parts that bite
Age cutoffs
Many underwriters won’t touch a park home past a certain age — commonly somewhere in the 20 to 30 year range. Older than that and you’re pushed into indemnity-only cover or a specialist residual market. This is why the insurance question matters before you buy, not after.
Construction and materials
Cladding type, roof profile, whether the home is timber-framed or has a non-standard extension bolted on — all of it moves you between underwriters. A home that’s perfectly insurable might become uninsurable after a DIY porch.
The declared value trap
This is the one that gets people. You insure the replacement cost of the home, not what you paid for it and not what it would sell for on the park. Over-declare and you’re gifting money to the insurer. Under-declare and you run into the average clause — where a partial claim gets reduced proportionally because you were underinsured. Claim £20k on a home you insured for half its replacement cost and you may get half of £20k. Nobody explains this at the point of sale.
Site owner requirements
Most pitch agreements require you to carry liability cover and to prove it. Some require the site owner to be noted on the policy. Get the exact wording in writing and make sure your schedule matches it, because breaching that clause is a separate problem from the claim itself.
Park closure is the elephant
The single biggest financial risk to a park home owner is the site shutting down or being redeveloped — and it’s generally not insurable. A standard policy pays nothing for the loss of your pitch. And physically moving an older park home frequently costs more than the home is worth. That risk sits with you, and no premium solves it.
Unoccupancy limits
Leave the home empty longer than the policy allows — often 30 to 60 days — and theft and escape-of-water cover can lapse. If you’re a seasonal resident, that clause matters more than your premium.
Ground movement
Subsidence and settlement are commonly excluded, partly because you don’t own the ground the home sits on. Read that section twice.
What actually drives your premium
- Age of the home — the single biggest lever.
- Sum insured — replacement value, not purchase price.
- Location — coastal exposure, flood mapping, windstorm zones.
- Security — alarms, locks, whether the site is gated or has on-site management.
- Occupancy — full-time living is cheaper than a holiday-only home.
- Claims history — yours, and sometimes the site’s.
- Excess — raising it is the fastest way to cut the number.
- Bundling — structure, contents, and liability with one underwriter usually beats splitting them.
How to get quotes without burning a weekend
Skip the comparison sites. Go direct to specialist brokers who actually place this risk, and have this ready before you call:
- Make, model, and year of the home, plus serial number if it has one.
- Dimensions and number of bedrooms.
- Purchase price and your best estimate of replacement cost.
- Current sums insured if you’re already covered.
- Site details and any liability limit the site owner demands.
- Security details and how many months a year it’s occupied.
Then get at least three quotes and interrogate each one with the same list of questions. Same questions, every time, so you’re comparing like for like instead of comparing marketing.
Questions to ask before you pay
- Is this new-for-old replacement, or market value/indemnity?
- What’s the maximum age you’ll cover, and what happens at renewal when I hit it?
- Is there an average clause, and how is it applied?
- Is park closure, pitch loss, or relocation covered at all?
- Is ground movement excluded?
- What’s the unoccupancy limit and what lapses when I exceed it?
- Are steps, decking, skirting, and outbuildings covered, and to what limit?
- Is there a percentage excess for storm or flood, separate from the standard excess?
Then read the schedule back against your questions. Brokers and call centres do make inputting errors, and the schedule is the contract — not the phone call.
The quiet workarounds
- If the home is too old for replacement cover, insure it at market value and self-insure the gap. Bank the difference in premium every year into a separate pot. It’s not elegant, but it’s honest risk management.
- Push the excess up and treat small damage as a cash problem, not a claim. One claim can cost you more in premium over the next five years than the repair.
- Document everything before you need to. Photos, receipts, upgrade invoices, serial numbers, dated. Claims get denied on proof, not on damage.
- Re-check your sum insured annually. Replacement costs drift. Most people never revisit the number after year one.
- If you’re buying, get a quote before you commit. Insurability is part of the home’s value. A cheap park home that no underwriter will touch is not a cheap park home.
The bottom line
Park home insurance is not complicated because the risk is exotic. It’s complicated because the home doesn’t fit the boxes the industry built, so the industry pushed it into a small specialist corner and stopped explaining it. The rules — age cutoffs, declared value, average clauses, excluded park closure — are all documented. They’re just not on the sales page.
Know which risks you’re actually transferring and which ones you’re carrying yourself, and get that in writing before you pay. The premium is the easy part. Knowing what isn’t covered is the whole game.