You need home content insurance if you rent a house or apartment. Contents insurance covers your personal property and belongings in the case of fire, wind, vandalism and theft among other coverages. Here’s some information on how you can find cheap contents insurance with the coverages you need.
If you live with someone to whom you are not married or related and keep your belongings in their home, you may also need to have contents insurance. Even if the other person owns the home, and have their own home insurance policy, their homeowners insurance policy does not usually provide coverage for someone who is not a ‘close relative’ of the owner. In this case you probably will need your own contents insurance policy.
Another feature of many home content insurance policies today is that they provide replacement cost coverage for your goods. If someone breaks into your apartment and steals your TV or furniture or other property, the insurance company will repay you with the new value of these goods so that you can replace them.
In the past, many policies deducted for the age of the item. For example, if your TV was stolen and it was five years old, the adjuster handling your claim may tell you “To replace your TV it will cost $1,600.00 but since your TV was 5 years old and the average life of a TV is 10 years, we will only pay you half or $800.00.”
When you are looking for the best renters insurance rates, be sure to verify that the policy provides replacement cost coverage.
It is important to carefully read your policy. Most standard home and contents insurance polices cover the typical household goods we all own. But there are a number of things that have limited coverage with usually either a cap on the maximum amount the insurance company will pay or they may exclude these items all together. These items include guns, cameras and camera equipment, jewelry, fine arts such as paintings or statues and many other items that would be considered collectables. If you are in doubt about items that you have that may fall under this area, query and find out what the limits are before purchasing the policy.
Most modern contents insurance also includes liability coverage to protect you in case you are sued by someone who claims you injured them through some act or inaction. For example, if you were having a bar-b-que on your apartment’s patio and a neighbor’s child came by and was accidentaly burned, your insurance company would cover all the legal costs of defending you if it turned into a lawsuit. And if you had been negligent and the person suing you would win the case, your insurance policy would pay the suit up to the limit of the liability coverage you purchased with your policy.
And if you own a pet, you have another very good reason to have this liability insurance coverage. If your dog would bite someone or some other accident of this type happened because of your pet, your liability coverage would be there to cover the legal issues up to your policy limits.
In today’s sue happy environment, one of the main reasons for carrying liability coverage is not the actual risk of you loosing a lawsuit. Rather, anyone can sue anyone and even frivolous suits still need to be defended and the legal fees can mount up rapidly. Remember that the liability portion of your policy has a limit as to how much they will pay if you lose a suit, but whether you win or lose all the defense costs are also paid by the insurance company in nearly all cases. Even when you find cheap home content insurance these are still coverages that will need to be included.
Make sure you check well when you are considering new or changing your home content insurance or comparing prices on renewal. The more you know about the details of the terms and conditions of your policy, the better off you will be in getting the lowest cost premium and the best coverage.
Gavin King is the Designated Broker of Realty In Idaho.
