The latest one for me is renting a new apartment, getting told it cost $XXXX a month, then being told I'm required to have $XXXXXX amount of renter's insurance at $XXX a month and oh, by the way, click here to use ours.
It’s not your property they care about. They usually want this because it includes liability insurance if you damage their property or someone else’s, or your negligence causes harm to someone.
In Australia we have very strong consumer protection law, here it’s expected (by the bank usually) the landlord has at least a minimum “landlord insurance” that covers all that stuff.
For anything not covered, where a tenant does damage thats what the bond is for.
Renter insurance should be optional.
Actually I’m surprised that landlord insurance is not already occurring, imagine a building with 100 apartments, I’m sure the bank would ask the landlord to have a single cover over 100’s of little crappy policies.
If renter insurance is required by regulations, this is likley another good target for policy change.
The answer to every question like this in the US is "because the wrong people would benefit".
In the past (and still today but less so), that literally meant black people. Now it mostly means poor people of all races.
It's been shown over and over that it's practically an American cultural value to accept lower benefits to yourself in trade for denying benefits to what you see as an undeserving group.
Same here. This has only been a thing recently when landlords figured out they could make money selling the insurance. When I was a renter, insurance was never required from me.
It was required in all my boilerplate leases going back to the late 90s. Just rarely if ever enforced or even asked about.
You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.
Plenty of places have required renters insurance going back the last two decades I've been an adult. My parents were landlords in the hood when I was a kid and they required it (as a lease provision, never enforced).
Then they should include it in the rent. My landlord wants a Porsche too, he doesn't get to add a separate Porsche Fee or mandate me to pay a Porsche payment, he has to take some of the money coming out of the rent and put it towards his Porsche.
If you’d rather pay $500 for the landlords insurance rather than $200 from your own policy, that sounds like a great plan. You’re paying for the Porsche either way.
That’s a legal requirement though. If I rent a car and the rental company requires me to also insure it or they won’t give me the keys, surely that should be included, even if the insurance money isn’t going to the rental company.
Renters insurance protects the landlord from liability claims. They don't care if you insure your own property, but I don't know of an insurance company that decouples liability and property.
Also, renters insurance is cheap, I haven't rented in more than a decade but when I rented I was only paying less than $100/year for it.
I just looked it up and currently the average premium for renters insurance is $15 to $22 a month.
The insurance requirement isn’t uncommon where I am (California). Though I would avoid whatever plan they are pushing. I got mine through my existing insurance provider and it worked out to ~$15 per month IIRC.