Renters Insurance

The building is your landlord’s problem. Everything you carried through the front door is yours. A renters policy is usually the cheapest insurance anyone buys, and the one most often skipped.

Three things it does

Replaces your belongings

Furniture, electronics, clothing, bicycles and kitchen equipment, after theft, fire, storm or water damage. Cover normally follows you outside the apartment too, so a laptop stolen from a café is still a claim.

Carries your liability as a tenant

If a guest is injured in your apartment, or a bath you left running damages the flat below, liability cover pays the claim and the legal costs of defending it. Many leases require a minimum liability limit before you get the keys.

Pays for somewhere else to live

If a covered event makes the apartment uninhabitable, additional living expenses pays the difference between your normal costs and what temporary accommodation actually costs.

Replacement cost or actual cash value

• Replacement cost pays what a new equivalent costs today.
• Actual cash value pays what your five-year-old sofa was worth on the day it burned, which is very little.

The difference in premium is small. The difference at claim time is not.

Roommates and shared apartments

A policy covers the named policyholder and, usually, relatives living with them. A roommate you are not related to needs their own. Two policies in one apartment is normal and not double cover — each one answers for its own belongings.