As a Landlord you may have thought "do I really need to require renters insurance?" As a tenant you may be thinking "is it really necessary to carry renters insurance?" The truth of the matter is renters insurance is really beneficial to everyone.
A lot of tenants are under the impression that the homeowners insurance will cover the belongings in the house in case of a disaster. This is actually not so, the homeowners insurance will only cover the property itself and not the renters belongings. You may be thinking, OK well how often do disasters actually happen? Truthfully you probably won't experience such a tragedy but in the case that there is a fire or flood unexpectedly and everything you own is destroyed, it would be a horrible realization that you cannot get any help or compensation for your belongings. As the Landlord your uninformed tenants may be expecting your homeowners insurance to kick in and cover this and it could end up being a headache to get sorted out.
A recent local story in the news was about a house fire started from a Christmas tree. The mother was in the shower when she heard the dog barking uncontrollably and went to investigate. By the time she realized there was a fire it had engulfed her entire living room and up the stairs almost reaching her 2 year old baby. Thankfully the mother and child only suffered smoke inhalation and minor burns, unfortunately the entire house went up in flames and this small family of a single mom and 3 kids lost everything except the car and clothes they were wearing. Unfortunately this was a rental townhouse and the mom now has to "start from scratch" in rebuilding their life and only 2 weeks before Christmas.
At Property Solutions of Utah, a professional property management company in the salt lake city area, we would hate to think something like this could happen to one of our property owners or tenants. We like to keep everyone informed, please don't fall into the trap of not requiring renters insurance or that you don't need a policy while renting.
