Canton Vaud insurance for land slippage

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
Hi everybody, we are considering settling in the area just to the north of Vevey and are aware that it isn’t perhaps the geologically most stable area in the world, with a good few examples of areas subject to movement. Can I ask, for those that know, can these risks be insured, despite being known about and well documented already?

I’ve never owned property in Switzerland before but I think the relevant insurance in Vaud is ECA.....although I'm not sure if that covers land movement or if it would come under home insurance?

I know this is a basic question for many, but with my level of French it takes a long time to research and there may be somebody out there with first-hand experience of this!

Many thanks.

2
Not in Vaud but in Canton Neuchâtel it is indeed the cantonal insurance which covers this sort risk.

It’s ECAP in Neuchâtel and the Vaud equivalent is indeed ECA.

It covers everything fixed in the building so everything structural plus bathroom and kitchen fittings etc but it doesn’t cover contents.

So for example if there is a landslide and your house fills up with muck they will cover the costs to replace or repair the kitchen, tiles, paint walls etc but not your furniture. You need to take out separate building and contents insurance for that.

If you have a leaking pipe and your house floods it is also your own insurance which covers it and not the cantonal insurance.

I think there may be exclusions if the property is built in a high risk area unless measures have been taken to stabilise the ground and mitigate the risk.

3

No experience with property insurance in Vaud, but Earth Scientist here

First check, the cantonal map of natural risks (carte dangers naturels) https://www.geo.vd.ch/

If the property is in high risk zone (danger élevé), there’s no reason to buy it. There are several risks, check this explanation document from canton Vaud https://www.vd.ch/fileadmin/user_upl…tives_2020.pdf

Glissements de terrain permanents (GPP) or permanent landslide - these are big masses of land slowly moving, a few cm per year. Something risky may happen during our lifetimes or in 10k years. All we know is the land is moving.

Glissements de terrain spontanés (GSS) - spontaneous landslide. This is the archetypal landlslide you see on the news. After intense rainfall land collapses and the velocity of mud coming downhill is several meters/second. These events are much more frequent and several times per year are on the news.

Chutes de pierres et de blocs (CPB) - rock fall: terrain below you home is stable, but the rocks above it fall.

Éboulements de roche, écroulements (EBO) - whole mountains falling down like is happening these day in Brienz (GR).

Affaissements et effondrements (EFF) - sinkholes in soluble rock.

Look at the map, the zones with low, mid and high risk are small. Not that hard to find a property. The white zone is “no risk” and covers a large area. So, don’t buy in a risk area, no matter the insurance.

Back to ECA, it seems they cover rocks falling (CPB) and sinkholes(EFF) but they exclude landslides (GPP, GSS, EBO), bottom of page 3, top of 4.

I’m no lawyer, so the wording confuses me a bit, you can see how in the translation by google “landslide” appears two times. One for éboulement, and one for glissement de terrain. Both not covered by ECA.

https://www.eca-vaud.ch/exteca/docum…aa2addaf11.pdf

4
Private insurers may cover things ECA doesn’t.

5
Insurance is a bit like prostitution, you can find absolutely anything, it is just a question of how much you are willing to pay

For a known risk and depending on the risk of it happening, the premium is going to be high, very high.

Go check with ECA people, they are in Vevey opposite the tax people

6
Thank you for that valuable response. We have already had a look at the website and the property we're looking at is in a zone at risk of movement, but is seems to be low. There has been some movement of the ground locally on the site, which we saw on fist inspection, but now makes more sense since we've examined the risks. We're still considering the place but will need to commission a survey just to make sure we understand the risks, as well as being able to mitigate them through insurance. The building is 30 years old and is clearly currently insured so we'll have to look into all that. Many thanks again!

7
May also be worth asking at the commune.

8
They don't do any searches here when you buy something, so be careful. Owners can be rather unscrupulous finding out that there is a building going up in front of them or next to their property, and simply put the place up for sale...

That said I think structural issues are reasonably rare. I see new builds going up all the time and they wait months, I mean months for things to dry out sometimes. Foundations go down in early April and nothing will change until late June...