My van is worth approximately $3,500 (according to Kelley Blue Book)
One of the things I get asked all the time is ‘How do you insure your van?’
I think it’s a valid question and since I’ve done a bit of research on this exact subject I thought I’d share with you how I got my van insured and how you can most likely get yours insured if you want.
My van is currently insured with Allstate and I am insured as just a car. I have bodily injury insurance, property damage, auto collision insurance and so on. I currently pay $128.49 a month, which is the cheapest rent ever!
What about the stuff in the van? And what about the build out itself? I emailed my insurance company I asked them about renters insurance for the van and they sent me back this email:
Kaya,
We have to have a physical address to insure for renter's insurance.
If anything changes about your living situation please let us know.
In the meantime I do highly recommend that you get a safe deposit box for your personal items.
What this means is I need to have a house and be paying rent at it to then take advantage of renters insurance in my van. I did ask one of the insurance agents ‘well how can they prove I’m not living at my moms?’ she told me that in the event of theft or property damage they would send someone out to asses the situation and if they determined I was living out of my van full time and NOT in my moms place, they would deny my claim and I would have been paying renters insurance this whole time for nothing.
Also I’m pretty sure that’s considered insurance fraud. Which is illegal. So don’t do that.
So, for those of you who are continuing to rent houses in other places, you can apply for renters insurance for your things inside the van! Yay! And all of the places I’ve asked around, its pretty cheap, so like $5-7 a month.
'What about the van buildout?’
This one is a little bit more complicated.
First of all, you could potentially insure your van as an RV. BUT, you need to have a toilet, a shower, and a kitchen all built into the van.
When I asked about my setup I got some pretty vague answers, but essentially: My stove top and sink with pump counts as a kitchen, and even my pee jar and wag bags counts as a bathroom, BUT I don’t have a shower. The lady on the phone did recommend one of those black solar shower bags as a possible shower, but I hate them and I'm stubborn so I didn't get one.
I can’t get my van insured as an RV, but if you have those three things (toilet, kitchen and shower) in your van you might be able to. I don’t know how comprehensive that RV insurance is but I am going to guess it’s better than just a car.
The other option I have for my build out, is taking our a custom insurance plan on all the things inside it. This has it’s own set of costs and rules and ultimately I didn’t decide to go with this because if I do end up totaling my van, I’m probably going to sell everything inside it and start over.
So! This is everything I understand about how to insure your van build out, I hope this was useful to you. If you have anymore questions about this please let me know, and if nothing else, I’ll see you next time!
