Everything you need to know about renters insurance
One of the perks of being a tenant is that it’s your landlord’s responsibility to insure the building and make repairs when necessary. Beware though, as a tenant, your landlord's insurance does not cover your personal belongings. If your home gets broken into, or your things destroyed in a storm or a fire, your landlord is under no obligation to replace them or reimburse you.
Not ideal, right?! Luckily, renters insurance enables tenants to cover personal belongings in their rental property and claim for reimbursement or replacement in the case of damage, loss or theft. Damage could be the result of an accident or events such as a storm, flooding, fire, or burglary.
What does renters insurance cover?
Renters insurance includes your personal items such as furniture, clothes and electronics as well as other personal effects. It also covers your laptop, mobile, sporting equipment and jewellery if they are destroyed within your home or stolen from it.
Depending on where you use your belongings you might want to get portables insurance. This is especially if you regularly have expensive things such as jewellery, laptops, tools and musical instruments with you outside of home. More details on both renters and portables insurance can be found in this FAQ.
Do I need to get renters insurance?
Whether renters insurance is for you, is entirely up to you. You, more than anyone, will know the risks to your property and if you’re comfortable managing surprises financially. You might have had to bear the cringing feeling of forking out money for damage to a new laptop that your product warranty did not cover, or locked your bike outside the café only to discover, upon returning from brunch, that it’s no longer where you left it and in fact, nowhere to be found at all. On the other hand, you might feel that you do not own that much, and you’re happy to move on if your things disappeared, or got destroyed.
Either way, creating a checklist of the things you own is a good way of understanding how much you own, and how much you’d be out of pocket to replace them. That way you can pick the items that matter to you to include in your policy. Once you get a quote you’ll be able to understand how much, or how little, it would cost you to get some extra peace of mind. You can get a free quote in under 2 minutes by downloading the Sorted app and tapping ‘Insurance’.
Last but not least, read the policy documentation that comes with your quote. You might think this part is boring but it’s where you can compare the value of your items, with the costs to insure them and the policy excess. This will help you figure out if you see value in getting insured. Make sure you understand the terms under which your things would be insured, and clarify any jargon if you’re not sure what it means. We’ve created this list of insurance definitions to demystify some of the terms you might come across.
To find out how little you could be paying to keep your belongings safe with Kanopi download the Sorted app here.