If you have multiple insurances from the same company you can [sometimes?] get discounts on rates. The way mine works out, the discount on my car insurance is slightly more than the renters is to begin with, so it's like I get the renters for better than free.

After my old upstairs neighbors decided to run their sink while someone was replacing a pipe in their apartment and it caused my ceiling to come crashing down in a lovely flood...I have to agree...

When you combine renters and auto insurance, the multi-policy discount is usually greater than or around even to the cost of the renters insurance.

@Ihatephonecompanies: Um, your comment hadn't posted yet when I typed mine below. Seems we're on the same page :)

I guess it's good in case you get robbed, but check your policy closely. Back when I had it, my policy didn't cover loss from fire or flood.

I've got the renter's insurance - it's the cataloging of my belongings that I haven't done. I hope there isn't a fire.

I can't agree enough: renter's insurance is a great idea. You always want to think that "It can't happen to me", but it can.
Our townhouse was broken into earlier this year. We have a neighbor on either side that we share a wall with, and the break-in occurred in the early evening. Neither neighbor saw or heard a thing. My fiance's old apartment required renter's insurance and we decided at the last minute to carry it over to the new place. I am so happy that we did. We got decent reparations for what was stolen, and we were definitely of the group that could only afford to replace part of what we lost. Insurance is well worth the minimal monthly cost.

While Phil jokes you may not have anything worth stealing, it's the fires that will take away everything in a moment. Even the stuff you need that isn't worth stealing like clothes. I've lived in two apartments that had close calls with fires. The property owner's insurance doesn't cover your stuff.

i made the insurance system explode because my legal address in grad school was not the same as my mailing address and I was worried if I changed my physical address to reflect the mailing address, i'd lose my "authorized user" status on my mom's car insurance. yes i gambled by not having it, but because I was "away at school" i was still covered by the 'rents homeowners insurance (for about 6500 total)

Our renter's insurance -- to cover everything my fiancé and I own, which includes a lot of electronics and my engagement ring -- costs us $137 / year. (And we live on the VA side of DC.)

Maybe that's $137 I'll never see back, but considering the cost of a Wii, PS3, 42" TV, two gaming PCs, and the aggregate cost of all our furniture (frankly I wouldn't mind if my entire wardrobe burned up)... if anything does happen to us that'll be the best $137 I ever spent.

@Ihatephonecompanies: You can also get discounts on renters insurance for having certain safety devices in your home.

These may include having a fire extinguisher, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detector, burglar alarms, burglar bars on windows, security doors, certain types of locks, etc. I was pleasantly surprised at learning this.

How can people not have Renter's insurance these days? My girlfriend pays $30/yr from State Farm for it. I'm sure she has some limited protection, but again $30 to help replace $1000's of dollars in possessions. Can u say bargain?

@Smashville_makes his own comments at home: My first slumlord did that, only he was fixing their toilet when his misdeeds caused a torrential downpour into my apartment. Fortunately, it was over our bathroom and not my living room or a bedroom.

I ran upstairs, and the slumlord's response was, "Oh, I thought it might do that."

Wow. Thanks consumerist... Whenever anyone talked to me about rental insurance, i always declined, figuring the price would be similar (although a bit cheaper) to auto insurance.... If it's only $100, i'm so in. I just sent off for a quote from TD Insurance. If their insurance is HALF as good as their customer service, it's gotta be amazing!

@kateblack: Yeah...when I went upstairs, I was shocked (or maybe not) to find out that all of their furniture was beanbag chairs. And I don't mean that all they had were a couple of beanbag chairs...I mean...their entire apartment was full of beanbag chairs.

It might not hurt to check to see if you can put an alarm system in your place. You might get a discount with it installed.

Is there anyone in Brooklyn with renter's insurance? Insurance seems to be cheap everywhere except NYC. I would love to get this for myself and am looking for recommendations on a great insurance company (with the best value).

You might want to make sure your renter's insurance also gives you liability coverage so if someone trips and falls in your kitchen, you're covered. Your building insurance probably doesn't cover this.

Also, condo insurance is important. The condo association will have insurance for casualty to the building but will not protect your contents. This stuff is pretty cheap and is worth having.

Dislaimer - I work at an insurance company, but I don't do anything with insurance.

Renter's insurance is so cheap that you'd be a fool not to get it, if you have anything of relative value. My first landlord actually required it before you could move in.

When I read the part about pawn shops, I also thought about the service we use for our company laptops - LoJack for laptops. We've had 4 stolen this year that I know of, and each of them were recovered. I bought my wife a laptop and that's one of the first extras I got after I set it all up, it only cost me $80 for 3 years. If I'm spending almost $1000 on a laptop, I'd be kicking myself for cheaping out on $80 for pretty much guaranteed recovery.

@Smashville_makes his own comments at home: Careful though: not all renter's insurance policies cover water damage (and basically none of them cover actual floods unless you pay extra)

If a burglar burgles, is it a burglarizer who burglarizes? :)

A buddy of mine had a ton of Star Wars collectibles, mostly older figures in the package. The old lady in the apartment next to him fell asleep while smoking and burned the whole apartment building to the ground.
He lost EVERYTHING.
He had no insurance.

A friend of mine had an apartment fire. There was an electrical short right about the time she left for work, and the fire was so quick & intense that (which she didn't yet know it) she was homeless and only had her car and the clothes on her back by the time she got to work one town over.
No renters insurance, and the building insurance didn't cover any of her stuff. It took 2-3 YEARS before her standard of living was anything remotely like it had been before the fire.

I didn't bother with renters insurance for a long time, oddly the thing that made me get some was some used furniture. I bought some Ethan Allen chairs off craigslist, and out of curiosity went and checked and discovered my $375 chairs would cost over $4,200 to replace with new. Since they are exactly the sort of burgundy leather wingback chairs I've wanted for years I decided it was well worth making sure I had the means to replace them and my other stuff in case of a disaster.

@DoubleEcho: Shop around for the LoJack licenses. I got a 3 year license for $10 from a surplus electronics dealer. I replaced my hard drive and reloaded windows, and it still shows my computer is checking in.

Renter's insurance often covers items when they're outside the home, as well. My wife and I had a car break-in. Car insurance only covered damage to the car and stolen items you would exclusively use in the car. Our phone charger was covered, but the phone wasn't. The stereo was covered, but CDs weren't. Without renter's insurance, we would have been paying a lot more out of pocket.

As far as documenting property, it's easy enough to photograph high value items. You can upload those images on a photo-sharing site so you have a handy back-up in case of fire, computer theft, etc. It might be wise to set those photos to private or in a separate account. There's no use documenting your property if the documentation is also stolen or destroyed.

@Ihatephonecompanies: This is very true. By spending $100 for renters insurance, I saved $140 on my auto, basically giving myself back $40 while gaining a sense of security.

I rent an apartment in Raleigh, NC and I pay about $125 per year for the (landlord required) $50,000 worth of coverage. I have carried renter's insurance at every place I've rented - completely worth it for the peace of mind. I have Erie Insurance, on the same policy as my car, FWIW. NetQuote and other insurance comparison sites can give you rates for your area.

@techstar25: As I mentioned earlier, depending on the policy his loss may not have been covered even if he'd had insurance.

I'm sure there are some renter's insurance policies that cover fire, but don't automatically assume that they all do.

I made sure to get the renters insurance when I moved into my own place after college, and it was as cheap as consumerist describes. Luckily I have not had to use it, but if I did, I know my insurance company would be awesome about taking care of stuff. I just upped the coverage recently because of some new purchases, and my insurance premiums didn't go up much.

I've purchased renters (and now homeowners) insurance since I moved out of home. Even when I was financially strapped and had to drop some discretionary expenses to afford it, I managed to scrape up the money. Never had an accident or calamity, but I *know* that the moment it lapses, something bad will happen.
That said, there is something that *really* pisses me off. Occasionally one reads in the news about a person or family whose apartment/home (most often these people are renters) was devastated by fire or burglarized or what have you. Then they cry that they didn't have any insurance. Unless you are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel, you CAN afford renters' insurance. Then, after they are done crying, they or the local newspaper or whatever, appeal to the public to help them out, because they were too stupid and cheap not to buy renter's insurance.

As someone in her (now late!) 20s, this is something I have sprung for. Even in NYC in a "high crime" area, it's less than $170 a year, and that includes high-level electronics replacement. Make sure you schedule out your electronics separately so that you get replacement cost, not value at theft replacement.

As someone who was a broke, broke college student -- even if you have crappy stuff, this is a better way to get money for upgrading than waiting for someone to take it and then, what, starting from zero?

@itiswhatitis: We're in Brooklyn and have MetLife. We pay about $400 a year for $30K replacement coverage, $7500 additional living expenses and $300K personal liability (required by our building). I think we also have some riders for other stuff.

@redskull:
Reading your policy is a good idea for any type of insruance you purchase.

@ams199:
Erie is a great carrier. When I was on the East Coast, that was my carrier. Their claims service is fantastic.

Another comment: Before you think Oh, I don't have anything valuable, remember that if there's a fire, you may have to replace EVERYTHING. Dishes. Shoes. Toiletries. Towels. Underwear. It's not like when you moved out of your parents' house and didn't have a sofa or a proper bed or more than three plates for six months; it's like you landed on planet Earth with literally the clothes on your back and have to acquire every single item you use in your daily life.

@H3ion:
Condo insurance is on a different form (an HO-6) if you own the condo. That covers your stuff from the walls in. The exterior and common areas should be covered by the building owner.

If you're renting a condo, then you just get a renter's policy as if you were renting a house or apartment.

Even better - if you accidentally start a fire, you can in some jurisdictions be held responsible financially for any and all damages - the landlord's insurance company will sue YOU. Without your own insurance that covers this you get to choose between bankruptcy and a lifetime of garnishment.

@Nighthawke:
This is a great idea. My complex doesn't provide alarms, but they're okay with tenants having them installed (as long as it's done by a professional).

My only caveat would be to be careful when choosing your contents limit. I find a lot of my clients undervalue their posessions, which is strange. You'd think it'd be the opposite, but people don't think about all the stuff they'd have to replace in a total loss.

A complex a couple of miles from mine had a huge fire just a couple of days ago. They were interviewing people on the news who'd lost everything. I hope they had renters' insurance.

I have renters insurance with an added bonus: my insurnace company (Allstate) sells a rider for identity theft insurance. Only $40/year.

Every 1 of the 5 apartments I've had in the last 15 years has required me to get rental insurance. I thought that was standard.

One weird thing, my car was burglarized, and my auto insurance would not cover the cost of the things stolen from the car (apparently auto insurance only covers the car, not the stuff in it), but my rental insurance would have covered it had it been worth more than the deductible.

@redskull: flood is typically never covered under a homeowners or renters policy. But the term flood is a specific thing, it doesnt just mean alot of water.

does anyone know how this works in the common financial roommate situation? people living together because it's cheaper not because they like each other which was the case in the 2 apartments I had in NYC. None of the stuff outside of my apartment bedroom was mine. I just used a rider on my mom's homeowner's policy because I was away at school which covered 6500 dollars. i have no idea if my roommates had renters insurance or not. i was less concerned with theft than i was with fire, the signs saying "flammable building" were oh so comforting.

@itiswhatitis: I'm in Brooklyn. Our coverage is 150% more expensive than the policy I held in a smaller southern city. It's still a lot more reasonable than living without renter's insurance in a worst case scenario.

@sponica: thats really not alot of coverage, most people have alot more than they think they do.

Most companies are aware of the whole college / away from the legal address issue and have ways to resolve it, if only changing your garaging zip code for your car to your current address to allow you to get renters too. any agent worth their salt should help you do that.

@AustinTXProgrammer: Freakin' sweet man! Hopefully it wasn't a stolen license (I kid, I kid).

Of course I get this tip after I already paid for it. :(

I don't understand how items are "recovered" from pawn shops. We were recently robbed and called many pawn shops about a particular item. They took down the description and serial numbers, but said we had to go through the police to recover anything. The police told us they don't do anything beyond the initial report they took. Now I feel like all we did was ensure those pawn shops won't contact us if they do end up with the item because they think we'll rat them out for buying stolen goods.

@itiswhatitis: I'm not in Brooklyn, but I had renter's insurance when I lived in Jersey City, which is a pretty shitty town. My policy was like $200 a year with Allstate.

@H3ion: Three months after getting my condo insurance, the waste trap in my upstairs neighbor's bathroom started to leak, causing the ceiling of my bathroom to start to disintegrate. It ended up being about $3,000 worth of damage, all covered by my insurance, which was like $350 a year.