Son is sort of renting a condo from us. He is living there until he can find a home to purchase. He will cover the expenses, but not give us a profit. Hopefully it will only be 3-4 months but the insurance company said he needs tenants insurance, that our HO won’t cover his stuff at the condo. What is a typical amount for 2 tvs, a laptop, cell phone, clothing, living room and bedroom furniture, dining table and kitchenware and a small set of linens? The dining room will likely be a used table off craigslist. The sofa/loveseat are lazyboy, about $2k. His girlfriend will apparently need her own policy. I guess in that case she can cover part of the furniture and kitchen, so maybe only $15 k each? Hoping they can keep this bill pretty low. It is contents insurance. I’m not sure if liability is always included or not.
If he has car insurance, it’s fairly common for them to offer renters insurance for not much. First place to check.
My S pays about 150-160/yr. so $12-14/month for renter’s insurance. I think it covers up to $15,000 for his belongings. He has his car insurance through the same company.
He will get it though the same company as car insurance. It’s just hard to figure out what all your belongings are worth. He will have a lot of stuff still here at my house.
Wait a minute, what? The insurance company is telling you what he must have? Or are they telling you what they advise? I don’t think the insurance company can force your tenant to have renter’s insurance to cover his property. That is none of their business. Many tenants don’t have renters insurance. Now the Homeowners Association can require it, because HOA’s seem to be able to do anything they want.
When he gets the insurance, really, covering the belongings, when they aren’t highly valuable, is fairly irrelevant. It is very unlikely they would all be destroyed, plus, it wouldn’t crush them to lose so little. However, the important thing is the liability coverage. We recommend that our tenants get liability insurance, and a deductible low enough that their policy is actually useable, should they have to go into a hotel while repairs are made. Some of our condo’s HOA’s require the liability insurance. Shouldn’t cost him much more than $100-$125/yr.
I would be willing to take the risk and go without tenants coverage for the items you list. One thing to consider is what happens if he does make a claim? It may affect his ability to obtain homeowner’s coverage when he does buy a house. In this situation, I’d much rather have liability than contents coverage. Liability coverage should be reasonable.
We were robbed about 5-6 years ago and it was mainly a collection of his that was stolen. Luckily our HO insurance covered it. He is very sensitive about security since then. He has purchased himself a motion sensing camera (its called the Canary) that sends him alerts and video or stills when it senses motion. I know he would be very unhappy if something happened to his stuff again. Of course, he has the more valuable part of the collection at my house. I just wanted to help him determine what value to place on his contents should he decide to get the insurance. The homeowners insurance is not requiring it. I meant MY policy on our house that he moved out of would not cover it. I do have some minimal contents insurance on the condo, and I’m not clear on whether he could claim any of his stuff, although if it was MY stuff I know it would be covered. And yes, the likelihood of a total loss is low, but his girlfriend does use hair appliances, and they do cook and light candles so…anything is possible.
I used to be so good at this stuff but now I’m not even sure if the stuff he left here is covered by my contents insurance or not. Along those lines, I know the structure has to be insured to 80% of value for replacement purposes (there is under-insurance penalty of sorts), but not sure about contents. What I’m saying is, if he buys 5000 worth of coverage but owns 15000 worth of stuff will they pay out the whole claim in say 4000 of stuff is stolen? Or will they say he is under-insured because he owns more than he insured. Obviously if it all got wiped out he’d only get he 5000 of coverage he had purchased. Those are questions for insurance professionals and this may not be the place to pose the questions.
Good point about what if he makes a claim…and future coverage. Our company is very good at not penalizing nor raising rates for claims. He had an at-fault accident when he was about 22, and his rate did not go up. We have one of the best insurance companies in NJ (imo) There is not guarantee though that they would write his policy on his next home though…That circles me back around to insuring for the total loss, but having a high deductible and not making a small claim. That would keep his rate down, but cover the bad stuff, which is the point of insurance. Thanks for pointing that out because I hadn’t thought about that angle.
I can’t imagine that if he makes a small claim for a tenants insurance issue (and no doubt even 15K would be considered a small claim), that it would stop him from getting homeowners insurance. I would also imagine that something stolen/damaged from your house would be covered under your insurance. It’s your families property, in your home, so how could they not cover it?
Certainly if it’s important to him for his stuff to be covered, I would think it would be a small amount in addition to the liability coverage to take care of it. My main point is that the amount that a young man owns that could be lost is small potatoes compared to potential liability claims. If the cause of a loss to the condo is a candle or kitchen fire that is their fault, covering a lawsuit against them for hundreds of thousands of dollars is far more important than personal possessions.
I work for an insurance agent. Our company requires a minimum of $20,000 on a renters policy. This covers the cost to replace the belongings with new, not with Craiglist stuff. We also have an inventory worksheet to help determine the amount of coverage needed. The customer is required to come up with the estimated replacement cost of their stuff, but the worksheet does have categories that many forget to include, like books, musical instruments, etc. It can add up to $20,000 or more very easily. All of our policies include liability. Check with your agent. Because the cost of renters insurance is low, in many cases the discount on the auto policy for having renters insurance is enough to pay most of the premium on the renters policy.
I agree with musicmom: the important things are to get replacement cost coverage and a specific rider or listing for a particular item. In my kid’s case, a violin. I think some companies require or start coverages at 10k but I know it varies. I don’t think the amount is that important except for the possibility of a total loss like a fire. Those are rare.
Musicmom, I know we get discounts for having both polices with the same company, but wondered if renters insurance would trigger the same % discount. That would be great. Plus, he is probably going to have a monitored alarm (with a monitored smoke alarm). The monitoring will be $15/month. He is getting a Simplisafe alarm from his grandmom. It is easy to use and he can take it with him when he gets his house.
He has been one of the naggers in our house to make sure we set the alarm! When we were robbed we had the alarm, but it wasn’t monitored. Because it only rings for a short time we didn’t even know until days later when we got home. My friend checked the house, but didn’t realize what the different numbers meant when she came and checked on it. They didn’t leave any mess so she didn’t notice. We were a little glad, because to be notified on vacation would have stunk and we would have rushed home, even though there was nothing we could do. We are monitored now and I added monitored smokes to the system as well. I realized having smoke alarms that are monitored is probably more important that burglar monitoring.
It was people my sons knew who broke in and they were caught when someone saw them with some of my sons things. Son missed several days of football practice, so the whole team knew we were away.
I just rented an apartment and our state mandates at least $30K coverage. Policy was just at $200 for 12 months. The requirement was in my rental agreement. Each state is different, I’m sure.