Renters insurance

What renters insurance protects, how it differs from your landlord’s policy, and which companies write it.

Companies: 12
Full profiles: 11
Comparisons: 10

The basics

How renters insurance works

Your landlord insures the building. That policy does nothing for your belongings and nothing for you if you are sued. Renters insurance covers the things you own, your legal liability, and the cost of living somewhere else if the unit becomes uninhabitable after a covered loss.

It follows you rather than the address. Property stolen from your car, from a hotel room or from your desk at work is generally covered by the same policy, at a reduced limit when the loss happens away from home.

This line in the database

Companies writing this line: 1211 researched in full
Published comparisons: 10
Tools for this line: 3
Guides that apply: 7

What you are buying

What the coverages do

Each of these is priced and limited separately, so it helps to read them as separate promises rather than as one policy.

Personal property: Your belongings, against the causes of loss the policy lists: fire, smoke, theft, vandalism, certain kinds of water damage, wind, and so on. The limit you pick should reflect what replacing everything would cost, not what you could sell it all for.
Personal liability: Pays when you are legally responsible for injuring someone or damaging their property, including damage you cause to the building itself, and pays for your legal defense.
Loss of use, also called additional living expense: Pays the extra cost of staying somewhere else while the unit is being repaired after a covered loss. It reimburses the difference between your usual living costs and your temporary ones.
Medical payments to others: Pays minor medical bills for a guest hurt in your home without needing to establish fault, which keeps small incidents from turning into liability claims.

Add-ons

Optional coverages you may be offered

Replacement cost on contents, if the base policy pays actual cash value. This is usually the single most consequential upgrade on a renters policy.
Scheduled personal property, for an engagement ring, a camera kit, a musical instrument or a bicycle whose value exceeds the policy’s internal cap for that category.
Water backup, for water entering through drains or sewers, which the base policy excludes.
Earthquake, added by endorsement or bought separately depending on where you live.
Identity theft resolution, which pays the costs of restoring your records rather than reimbursing the stolen funds themselves.
Pet liability, which some insurers restrict or exclude by breed and by bite history.

Where cover stops

Common exclusions and limitations

The exclusions are where a policy is actually decided. These are the ones that come up most often on this line.

Flood and earthquake are excluded from the base policy. Both are bought separately.
Internal category caps are the thing people discover at claim time. Jewelry, watches, furs, cash, firearms, business property and electronics each have their own sublimit, well under the overall contents limit.
Roommates are not automatically covered. Unless they are named on the policy, their belongings and their liability are their own problem.
Property used for a business at home is limited or excluded.
Intentional damage, and damage from your own neglect, are excluded.
Bed bugs, rodents, mold from ongoing seepage, and gradual leaks are maintenance problems, not covered losses.
If the contents are written on an actual cash value basis, an old laptop is paid for as an old laptop, not as a new one.

Pricing inputs

What affects what you pay

01The contents limit and the liability limit you select.
02Whether contents are replacement cost or actual cash value.
03The deductible.
04Where the unit is, including crime and weather exposure for that area.
05The building: construction type, age, and fire protection.
06Your claims history.
07Protective features, such as an alarm system, sprinklers or a secured building.
08Whether the policy is bundled with an auto policy at the same insurer.
09Anything that increases liability exposure, such as a dog or a home business.

The process

How getting a quote generally works

In the order it usually happens. Nothing here is a quote, and this site does not sell one.

1
You give the address, the unit, who lives there and the limits you want.
2
Most of the work is on your side: walk through the apartment, photograph everything, and add up what replacing it would cost.
3
People underestimate this badly, because the total is driven by the boring things, the clothes, the kitchen, the linens and the furniture, not by the one expensive item you think of first.
4
Many landlords require proof of renters insurance with a minimum liability limit and sometimes require being named as an interested party, which simply means they get notice if the policy lapses.

Glossary

Terminology

The words that appear on a quote or a policy for this line, in plain language.

Actual cash value: Replacement cost minus depreciation for age and condition.
Replacement cost: What a new equivalent costs today. Insurers typically pay the depreciated amount first and the rest once you have actually replaced the item and shown the receipt.
Sublimit: A cap that applies to one category of property, inside the overall contents limit.
Scheduling: Listing a specific item with its own limit, usually after an appraisal, so it is not subject to the category sublimit.
Named insured: The person the policy belongs to. Everyone else in the unit is covered only if the policy says so, which generally means relatives who live with you, not roommates.
Named perils: The list of causes of loss the policy covers. Renters contents are usually written this way, so a cause that is not on the list is not covered.

Before you buy

Questions worth asking before you buy

Ask these of an agent, or of yourself, before comparing two prices.

Is personal property paid at replacement cost or actual cash value?
What are the sublimits for jewelry, electronics, bicycles and cash?
Is water backup included, and is there any coverage for flood?
Am I covered for theft away from home, and at what limit?
Does the liability coverage extend to damage I cause to the building?
Is my roommate covered, or do they need their own policy?
Is my pet covered for liability, and are any breeds excluded?
What does the landlord actually require, and does this policy satisfy it?

Who writes it

Companies that write this insurance

Every profile is built from the company's own documentation and from regulators, with the source and the date beside each fact.

All companies

Partial records

We have verified that these companies write this line, but have not finished researching them. Their profiles show only what is sourced.

Allstate4 lines of insurance
Northbrook, Illinois
Partial record

Side by side

Comparisons for this line

A pair is published only where enough fields are verified for both companies to make the comparison worth reading. No comparison names a winner.

All comparisons

Free tools

Tools for this line

Each one shows its arithmetic and its assumptions. None of them produces a premium, a quote or a savings figure.

Tool

Deductible exposure explorer

Shows exactly how one loss splits between you and your insurer at each deductible level, and how much more of a loss you carry when you raise it.

Open tool

Tool

Insurance company comparison

Put two companies side by side on the facts we have verified, with the source for each one and an explicit gap where we have not verified something.

Open tool

Tool

Homeowners coverage estimator

Shows how the limits on a homeowners policy relate to each other: other structures, personal property and loss of use as percentages of the dwelling limit you enter.

Open tool

Guides

Guides that apply here

All guides

Guide

How to read an insurance policy without reading all of it

A policy is four kinds of document stapled together. Knowing which part answers which question lets you check the things that decide a claim without reading the whole contract.

Read the guide

Guide

What a deductible actually costs you

A deductible is not a one-time cost. How it resets, how many can apply at once and whether it is a flat amount or a share of a limit all change what you are exposed to.

Read the guide

Guide

Actual cash value versus replacement cost

The same limit pays very differently depending on which valuation method the policy uses, and the method is often chosen for you by default.

Read the guide

Guide

What insurance companies mean by an exclusion

Exclusions are not fine print bolted on to a policy. They are how coverage is defined, and there are only a few reasons any of them exist.

Read the guide

Guide

How to compare two insurance companies fairly

Most comparisons are unfair by accident, because the two things being held up against each other were never the same thing. Here is how to make them comparable first.

Read the guide

Guide

What to do when a claim is denied

A denial is a decision with a stated reason, and the reason determines what you can do about it. Work out which kind you received before you argue with anyone.

Read the guide

Guide

Why the same coverage costs different amounts for different people

Identical coverage carries different prices because insurers are not pricing the coverage. They are pricing the expected cost of the risk behind it, and that is assembled from categories of factor.

Read the guide

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