Condominiums are designed to provide peace of mind living, but be aware that not everything is covered by your condo fees, nor the condominium association’s insurance.

The condominium association will have insurance for the building, common elements, and possibly some features within your condo unit, but not everything will be covered by the condo association’s insurance policy. You are responsible to insure your own personal property (called contents insurance), as well as any improvements or betterments that have been made over and above a standard condo unit. It is important that condo unit owners have a condo unit owner insurance policy to protect their personal contents, as well as any additions or alterations to their personal condo unit.

You will need to determine the estimated value of your personal contents for your own condo insurance policy, and you will want to make sure you have enough insurance coverage. Many individuals tend to underinsure as they underestimate the quantity and quality of their personal items – a valuation should be calculated on a replacement cost basis with current market values.

How do I determine the value of items in my condo unit?

When determining the value of items in your condo unit, consider the following examples of personal property items:

• Clothing and shoes
• Appliances (small and large)
• Everyday food, pots, pans, dishes
• Towels, linens
• Electronics
• Furniture, lamps, area rugs
• Personal care items
• Hobby items
• Books
• Items in a storage locker

You may need to make special considerations for personal property that have special limits of insurance and may need to be protected separately under many condo unit owner insurance policies.

Specialty items such as for example (jewelry, furs, art, watercraft, stamps etc…). If your specialty items are very high in value (ie. greater than $1,000 each) it is recommended that you keep the bill of sale and have them appraised every few years. This will make the recovery and the value determination of the object easier should any incident occur.

If your bicycle is more costly than average or has enhancements, then you should consider getting additional contents insurance to ensure proper coverage.

When assessing the value of your personal items it is a good idea to keep an inventory of your personal property in each room handy, this can be in the form of an electronic list, photographs or video camera footage. Ideally, these records should be stored somewhere safe should the unexpected to your condominium unit occur.

Setting an estimated value for betterments and improvements in your condo unit can be another tricky task. You are responsible to insure any condo upgrades over a standard condo unit, even if a previous owner did the upgrade. We recommend that you talk to an expert condo insurance broker at Armour to ensure your condo unit owner insurance is accurately tailored to meet your individual condo unit insurance needs.