Taking Photos For Park Home Insurance Claims

Taking photos for your park home insurance can make the process much easier and avoid any problems arising should you need to make a claim. You should take photos showing the general condition of your park home and any additions such as awnings, decking or a hot tub that you have added since taking out your insurance.

Phone cameras make this process much easier. You don’t need to be David Bailey to get photos that are clear and good enough for insurance purposes. Do check your photographs before you finish, though. Make sure you have the clear image you might need should a claim arise. It is important to avoid back-lit subjects (to avoid dark, silhouetted pictures) so you may need to pay a little attention to lighting or the time of day for external shots.

Remember to back up all the pictures you want to keep and store them on a separate hard drive, USB flash-drive or in cloud storage. Keep your park home photos in their own folder, sorted by date. You may want to make a sub-folder for repairs and maintenance and perhaps one for documentation like emails or receipts relating to your park home. Take photos of receipts and letters as well as keeping the hard copies safely.

Why take photographs of your park home?

It is important to keep a photographic record because park homes are modified and can be added to during their lifetime. This makes each one unique as opposed to a car, for instance, which will have a uniform list of specifications for your particular model, which don’t vary.

In the event that you do have to make a claim on your park home insurance, a good photographic record will help with the process of constructing a claim. The pictures will support your written information. This will make a claim easier and may even speed it up as you will be able to show clearly the issue which has given rise to the claim.

How often should you photograph your park home?

As a proud owner of a new park home you probably took photos when you first moved in. It is a good idea to get into the habit of regular photos each year after your spring clean. It is also important to keep a record of any repairs, refurbishment or upgrades. It is good practice to take pictures during any works that take place on your park home as this will help establish the true extent of the necessary work and may help resolve any dispute that may arise about the size of the insurance offer you receive.

Taking regular photos of your park home and keeping a photographic record of works, upgrades and refurbishment will also help you if you come to sell it in the future. It will provide a reliable record to any prospective buyer that your home has been properly looked after and maintained during your ownership.

What should I photograph?

Make a thorough 360˚photographic record of the outside of your home from back to front. If you have access to the underside of your park home, take a light and grab some shots there too.  As you build the photographic record of your home, make sure you pay attention to areas that are commonly featured in claims. Drains, gutters, power lines, fuel containers and connections, lights, door and window seals should all ideally be detailed in your records. It is also worth documenting the immediate surroundings to get a record of the trees and neighbouring structures, should there be any problems relating to them which lead to a claim in future.

You should take pictures of the interior as well. Photograph every room and ensure that you have a record of all your appliances, radiators and electrical devices. Carefully label your photographs for future reference, particularly any close-up shots that may not be obvious to locate. Also, you should photograph anything that you want individually valued in your insurance.

Documentation

It is a good idea, alongside filing hard copies of documentation relating to your park home, to take pictures of them too. Make sure these pictures are stored with your other park home photographs for ease of access. This should include contracts and receipts from anyone who works on your park home and any additions you make to your park home. This can all save time and may speed things up in the event of a claim.

Photographing your park home should not be a big job and we hope this guide makes it easier and quicker for you to complete. Be sure, should you need to make a claim on your insurance, it will be an effort well spent.

This is a marketing article from Park Home Assist, multi award-winning providers of residential park home insurance.  If you would like to speak to an advisor regarding insurance for your park home, please contact our friendly team in our Northampton office on 01604 946 796.

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Published – 26/11/21