Personal Insurance Blog

When a disaster strikes, it doesn’t matter if you own your home or rent.  Renters face the same risk as homeowners.

Your landlord may have insurance, but it only protects the landlord’s building structure not your personal belongs.

Imagine losing all your furniture, clothes and other belongs in a fire or other disaster.  How would replace all those items?   If you had a renter’s policy, then the policy would pay for you to replace your belongings.

A renter’s policy is very inexpensive compared to replacing everything in your home.  The average renter’s policy is less than $300.00 a year.

A homeowner policy, called an HO-4, is designed for renters and covers damage from 16 types of perils:

1. Fire and Lightning
2. Windstorm or hail
3. Explosion
4. Riot or civil commotion
5. Damage caused by aircraft
6. Damage caused by vehicles
7. Smoke
8. Vandalism or malicious mischief
9. Theft
10. Volcanic eruption
11. Falling objects
12. Weight of ice snow or sleet
13. Accidental discharge or overflow of water or steam from within a plumbing, heating, air conditioning, or automatic fire-protective sprinkler system, or from household appliance
14. Sudden and accidental tearing apart, cracking, burning or building of a steam or hot water heating system, an air conditioner or automatic fire protective system
15. Freezing of a plumbing, heating air conditioning or automatic, fire-protective sprinkler system, or of a household appliance
16. Sudden and accidental damage from artificially generated electrical current (does not include loss to a tube, transistor or similar electronic component)

What is does not cover:

1. Floods
2. War
3. Nuclear hazard
4. Neglect, meaning your failure to save our property at the time of the loss or after
5. Intentional loss, meaning your intentional destruction of your property
6. Governmental action, such as seizure of your property
7. Earth movement, such as earthquake, mudslide, and land slide

Knowing what is covered is a good first step on deciding if a policy is right for you. You need to decide how you want your belongings covered, Actual Cash Value or Replacement Cost coverage. The policy comes with the Actual Cash Value coverage, which means they will cover your property for the value at the time of the loss.  So you if purchased a TV or living room set five years ago for $500, it would be worth less today.  While you would need to spend about $500 for a new TV or living room set, the policy will pay only for the value of the old item.  They would take the cost, and then depreciate it, minus your deductible.

How do you avoid the company depreciating your belongs?  You can purchase an extra endorsement called Personal Property Replacement Cost coverage. The policy will pay what it actually cost to replace the item you lost (minus your deductible).

An added benefit to having the means to replace your belongings whether on an Actual Cash Value or Replacement Cost is the policy also gives you Liability protection for property damage and bodily injury lawsuits.  So if someone visits you and slips and falls, and then sues you, you’re covered for any cost, up to your liability limit.  The insurance company will also pay for our legal defense.

Another added benefit should your apartment become unlivable due to a fire, burst pipe or any other reason covered by the policy; your renter’s policy will cover additional living expenses.  Generally that means if you have to be put up in a hotel, while your apartment is made livable again, there is money in the policy for that too.

Please call us today for a quote, when combined with your auto policy, you not only save on your tenant policy, but also on your auto policy.  Our phone number is 718-659-2262.