
If your building or landlord requires tenants insurance, then yes you will need tenant insurance. If your building or landlord does not require insurance, it is still in your best long-term interest to get tenants insurance. Even if you are not required to get tenants insurance as part of your agreement, if you keep reading we can point out all of the reasons why it would be a good idea for you to have tenants insurance.
Reasons to Get Tenants Insurance
Multi-Policy Discounts
If you have your tenants insurance with the same insurance company as your auto insurance, you can usually get a multi-policy discount on both policies. These discounts can be anywhere from 5% to 17.5% depending on the company. In some cases, the savings from the multi-policy discount on the auto insurance can almost pay for a basic tenants package on its own.
Build Up Your Home Insurance Experience
We know what you are thinking, and yes, tenants insurance does count as having home insurance experience. So, if you buy a house in the future, your home insurance on that new house will be cheaper as you have a proven home insurance record.
Liability Coverage
This point cannot be stressed enough. Everyone should have some sort of personal liability coverage for themselves and their family just in case a lawsuit happens against them. As a renter, this could happen easier than you think.
If you leave the stove on and leave the apartment, there is a resulting fire and the buildings insurance company proves that you are negligent in your actions, you could be sued. If you do not have liability insurance through a tenants package you will have to fight and pay in court out of your own money. Depending on the amount of damage and circumstances, it could be a very costly endeavour.
Depending on the company and policy, the liability coverage may also follow you worldwide. As another example, if you put down your luggage at the airport and a professional pianist trips, falls, and breaks their arm due to your luggage being left unsafely in the isle, they could sue you for their loss of work. If you do not have liability coverage, you would again be finding yourself fighting this case in court on your own dime. Again, not all companies offer this, so be sure to review with your broker.
Coverage for Your Contents
If you must replace everything in your home at once following a fire, theft, or water damage, the price to do so can be significantly higher than you would expect. Those items that you got on sale would most likely not be on sale anymore. You will not be able to wait for sales and end up paying full price and needing to get everything at once. Every pair of pants, shirts, shoes, sofa, table, electronics, etc. Just be sure to review with your broker as some policies may only offer a depreciated value which will not provide you with enough money to purchase new replacement contents. You will want to ensure you have full replacement cost coverage with no deduction for depreciation.
These scenarios can happen and do happen to people every day. Fires or water damage happen every day to people and not having insurance for your contents can be a costly decision if it happens to you.
Low Cost
As mentioned above, having your auto insurance and tenant insurance with the same insurance company can have significant savings for you on both policies. Tenant insurance packages are not very expensive on their own. You can usually find tenant insurance packages starting in the $300 per year range with the basic content limits. Your monthly bill could be lower than getting a cup of coffee every day in that same month. The only difference is that the coffee is not going to respond to any lawsuits or help you replace your belongings in any worst-case scenarios.
The Wrap Up
Hopefully, we have convinced you by now to get a tenant insurance package if you do not already have one. We have multiple brokers in our office that had wished they knew more about tenant insurance before they got into the industry and this article is our way of helping others learn more about tenants insurance without having to be an insurance broker themselves.
A tenants package can be vital to help you replace your contents after a covered loss, and you get the liability coverage that you need without having to own a house. If you need tenant insurance, you can start your quote form our website – Tenant Insurance Quote.