Your landlord’s insurance covers the building, not anything you own inside it. Renters insurance does, and adds liability coverage plus the extra cost of a place to stay if a fire or burst pipe forces you out, for about $15 a month on average. Get a quote this week, starting with your car insurer.
It’s an easy thing to get wrong. The building is insured, so it feels like everything in it must be too. Then a kitchen fire or a burst pipe hits, and the landlord’s insurer pays to fix the building while replacing everything you owned falls to you.
Renters insurance fills that gap, and a standard policy covers three things:
- Your belongings, against fire, smoke, theft, vandalism, and the other disasters the policy names, and on most policies even away from home
- Liability, if you or someone in your household injures another person or damages their property, like a tub that overflows into the unit below
- Additional living expenses, the extra cost of a hotel, a temporary rental, and restaurant meals if a covered disaster forces you out while your home is repaired
It’s cheap for what it does. The national average premium was $171 a year in 2022, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Two choices decide whether a claim actually makes you whole. First, total what you own. Walk through your place, add up what it would cost to replace your laptop, phone, TV, furniture, and clothes at today’s prices, and buy at least that much personal property coverage.
Second, pick replacement cost over actual cash value. Actual cash value subtracts depreciation, so a four-year-old laptop pays out far less than a new one costs. Replacement cost pays what it takes to buy the item again, up to your limit.
Then get your first quote from the company that insures your car. Insurance.com’s analysis of insurer rates found that bundling renters and auto coverage saves about $114 a year on average, though the savings range widely by company. That can cover most of the premium.
No insurer will cover a fire or break-in that happened before the policy did, so every week you wait is a week your things are on you.
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