Renters Insurance - What is it and Who Needs it
Imagine going away on holiday for a week, only to return to the home you are renting and find it has been broken into. Your TV, laptop, and jewellery is gone, and some of your furnishings have been broken. Could you afford to replace it all by yourself? If your answer to that question is no, then you need renter's insurance.
Renter's insurance is a type of property insurance providing coverage to persons renting or subletting a home or apartment. This coverage provides protection for your personal possessions and assets in the event of theft, vandalism, fire or other types of damage, and can also cover liabilities and possibly your living expenses in case of a loss event.
More specifically, the liability coverage included in the policy helps to protect you against legal claims if you are held responsible for someone else's injuries or property damage. For example, if you accidentally leave the faucet running and it overflows into your neighbour's apartment below, your policy may cover for their necessary repairs. Renter's insurance can also pay for your living expenses if you cannot stay in your apartment due to a fire, flood, or other disaster.
You might think you don't need renter's insurance if you know the owner/landlord of the property has an insurance policy in place, but you should be aware that this will only cover the structure of the building itself and not you or any of your belongings. So if there is, for example, a flood that destroys all the personal property within the apartment you rent, the landlord's policy would be responsible for covering the damages to the structure, but would leave you pay for the loss of all your personal possessions out of pocket.
So how much renter's insurance do you actually need? The easiest way to determine that amount is to create a list of all your belongings, along with their estimated values, and calculate how much it would cost to replace them all. You can choose between replacement cost or actual value coverage. Replacement cost will provide you with a payout large enough to replace an item at its current full retail price, whereas actual value policies only pay for what an item was worth at the time it was damaged or destroyed. If you have very high value possessions, it might be worth adding a 'rider' to your policy to provide additional coverage in case costly valuables are lost or stolen.
It's quite simple really - if you rent your home and wish to protect your belongings, any type of renter's policy is better than not being insured at all, since having an insurance policy in place will safeguard you from losing everything you own in an unexpected event.
If you need more information about Renter's insurance, please contact us at [email protected].
Rozalina Georgiou
27th August, 2021
Limassol