You may think that if you rent an apartment or house you can get away without having homeowners insurance. After all, your landlord’s insurance will cover any costs if the home is damaged or broken into, right? Well, maybe not. You see, a landlord’s insurance will actually only cover the structure and any of your landlord’s own property that is in your rental property. If you rent a furnished apartment, this means that your landlord’s policy will cover the walls, pipes, furnishings, etc. All of your things in the apartment or home, on the other hand, will have to be covered by tenant homeowners insurance.
This type of insurance is also known as renters insurance, and it is set up to cover your property that is held in a rented home or apartment. You can purchase this type of insurance from a variety of places, but there are a few things you need to make sure that it covers.
First, make sure you’re getting enough insurance to cover all of your personal property. Think about what you would lose if your apartment building burned down to the ground, and estimate how much it would cost you to replace everything. That’s how much you need your insurance policy to cover. Usually, this type of insurance starts at about $10,000 worth of coverage, and it just goes right on up from there.
Second, you might want to make sure that you have some liability insurance. This will serve a few different purposes. It will, for one thing, ensure that if someone is harmed inside your apartment, you’ll be able to cover potential legal fees. It seems silly, but people are pretty quick to bring a law suit these days. Also, liability insurance will protect you from having to pay your landlord out of pocket should you cause damage to his property inadvertently – ie. leaving the pipes on or causing an accidental fire.
Once you know you’re getting enough coverage here, feel free to price check for tenant homeowners insurance through several different companies. Checking with at least three companies will give you a good idea of how much you should be paying for this type of insurance, and it really shouldn’t be much at all, especially if you live in a relatively safe, theft-free area. This type of insurance may be required by landlords, so be sure that you get it before you sign a lease!
Source by Ross Quade
