5 Reasons Why You Need Renters Insurance

Do you rent your home or apartment? Renters insurance protects your belongings from loss, damage, or destruction following things like burglaries, fires, tornadoes and other covered events. Plus, renters insurance also protects your liability (and your money) if someone is injured at your rental home or apartment. 

Check out these top five reasons why you need renters insurance. 

It’s a good idea to take inventory of your belongings. If the worst happened, how would you replace the costly electronics you own—things like smartphones, smartwatches, laptops, tablets, TVs and gaming systems? What about the hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes and clothes you have? And what’s your furniture worth—sofas, tables, chairs, beds, mattresses and recliners? All of these personal belongings, and more, can be covered by a renters insurance policy.

What would you do if a visitor got hurt at your place, and you couldn’t cover their medical bills? What if that person sued you—how would you cover the court costs? Consider these possibilities, which could happen to any renter:

• Your dog bit someone’s child.
• You had some friends over for a party, and things got unruly.
• Someone tripped and fell inside your apartment.

With a renters insurance policy, you can rest easy knowing you have coverage to protect yourself and your assets (up to the stated liability limit in your policy).

Many tenants mistakenly believe their landlord’s insurance will protect them, but that’s just not the case. As the owner of your rental home or apartment building, the landlord has a form of homeowners insurance that covers the physical structure itself, but it doesn’t cover your belongings inside. 

If your rental home or apartment is damaged and uninhabitable while repairs are being made, most renters insurance policies include coverage for the additional expenses you’ll incur during that time. For example, if your monthly rent is $900, but you can’t live in your apartment for the next month while it’s being repaired, then your renters insurance policy would cover the additional living expenses beyond $900 that you incur while staying in a hotel, eating meals out, etc.

Across the United States, premiums for renters insurance average between $15 and $30 per month, depending on the location and size of the rental unit and your possessions. Disclosure 1 1 National Association of Insurance Commissioners, “For Rent: Protecting Your Belongings With Renters Insurance,” https://www.naic.org/documents/protecting_your_belongings_with_renters_insurance.htm(opens in a new tab) , accessed Jan. 3, 2020.  To put that into perspective, you could insure all of your belongings (and your own liability) for about the cost of two movie tickets.