Not everyone realizes that renter’s insurance often covers personal belongings outside their home. If you’re keeping personal belongings in your car or a storage unit, you could save money by ensuring that your existing policy covers those items. If you don’t, you could spend extra money on policies you don’t need. But there are some exceptions and limits that you need to know about, too. If you’re looking for renter’s insurance in Kansas City, MO, from companies like Midwest Personal Insurance, be sure to ask about what exactly is covered.
Double-Check Your Limits
Renter’s insurance covers personal items you keep outside of your home, especially those in your car and storage units. Your car insurance would cover anything that happened to your car but say you had a sweater in the trunk that was damaged when the car was in an accident. The renter’s insurance would likely cover the cost of replacing the sweater.
But there’s an important limit — two, in fact — that you need to keep an eye on. One is that the coverage for anything outside your home won’t be able to exceed the coverage limits you chose when you bought the policy. So, if you’re storing the belongings of a recently deceased relative in a storage unit, you’ll need to contact your insurance agent to increase the coverage limits so that they’re adequate if something should happen to all that extra stuff in storage.
The other limit involves specifically covering off-premises belongings, no matter the amount. Some renter’s insurance policies cover only up to 10 percent of the coverage limits for items you keep outside your home. So if you have $25,000 worth of belongings and have coverage for $25,000, and some of those items are in a ransacked storage unit, for example, you may get only 10 percent of the coverage you thought you had.
Contact an insurance agency like Midwest Professional Insurance in Kansas City, MO, to find out about setting up adequate renter’s insurance coverage. When you know what’s covered, any claims you file will go much more smoothly.
