Landlord insurance vs home insurance

Home and contents insurance protects your home against damage or accidents. Landlord insurance covers you for the same things, but also covers you for loss of rent and malicious damage by your tentants. If you're a landlord, it's a no-brainer.

What's the difference between landlord insurance and home insurance?

Landlord insurance

Landlord insurance is a specialist form of home insurance that covers everything normal home insurance does – plus a range of extra protections for problems unique to landlords. This can include theft and intentional damage by the tenant, loss of rent when your place is damaged or if the tenant can't pay and legal expenses and replacement locks if you have to evict a tenant.

Home insurance

Home insurance covers you if a storm, fire, theft or other insured event damages or destroys your home or its contents. You can typically choose two forms of protection: protection for your home (building insurance) and protection for your belongings (contents insurance). It's a step down from landlord insurance because that also protects your business; specifically, any issues your tenants may cause.

What will landlord insurance protect you for that home insurance won't?

The tenant protection part of landlord insurance gives you additional protection against the following:

• Theft and intentional damage by the tenant
• Loss of rent when your place is damaged
• Loss of rent if the tenant can't pay
• Your legal expenses if you have to evict a tenant
• Replacement locks if you have to evict a tenant

Features included in landlord insurance vs home insurance

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the similarities and differences between landlord insurance and home insurance.

Renting out a property? Get covered with landlord insurance

Name	Product	Tenant Default and Damage	Loss of Rent	Accidental Damage	Sum Insured Safeguard	Cooling-off Period	Cheapest way to pay
Youi Landlord Building and Contents Insurance		Optional	The reasonable rental amount for up to 12 months			20 days	Annually	Cover for investment property from fire, theft and numerous weather events.	Get a quoteView details Compare	loading Fetching your data...
Budget Direct Landlord Home & Contents Insurance		Optional	10% of the sum insured amount of your property		Optional	21 days	Annually	Save 30% on your first year's premium when you buy a combined home and contents policy online. T&Cs apply.	Get a quoteView details Compare	loading Fetching your data...
QBE Landlord Home & Contents Insurance			The lesser of: Up to 24 months of lost rent, or 20% of your sum insured amount			21 days	Annually	Get 10% off for buying a combined policy, plus an additional 10% in the first year for signing up online. T&Cs apply.	View details Compare	loading Fetching your data...
Qantas Landlord Home and Contents Insurance		Optional	10% of the sum insured amount of your property		Optional	21 days	Annually	Earn up to 30,000 Qantas Points with every Qantas Landlord Insurance policy you take out by 30 September. T&Cs and exclusions apply.	Get a quoteView details Compare	loading Fetching your data...

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How to choose the right landlord insurance

As a landlord, there are three areas you need to protect: your building, the belongings that you keep in the building and your rental income. Here's how to make sure you have the right amount of cover:

• Decide what needs to be protected. If you don't keep much inside the property or if losing the contents won't break the bank, you may be able to get away without landlord contents insurance. If you are renting to a family member and trust them not to burn the place down, you may also be able to do without landlord insurance. Similarly, if you're living in an apartment, you might not need building insurance as strata has your back. But for the most part, it would be shortsighted to go without either building insurance or landlord protection because these can save your entire investment.
• Decide how much to insure the building for. When you're insuring the building, it makes sense to insure it for its entire value, otherwise you would only get a partial payout if it's destroyed. This could end up costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can also add additional cover that would enable you to rebuild your property to the same specs as the old one – even if the cost of building materials has risen causing the costs to blow out.
• Read and re-read the exclusions in your policy documents. These are the situations where you won't be covered. For example, you often won't be covered for floods unless you buy additional flood protection. If you're not familiar with your policy's exclusions, it can be easy to overlook a key piece of information like this.

FAQs about landlord insurance vs home insurance

• Do you need home insurance if you already have landlord insurance?

  No, you won't need an additional home insurance policy if you've already taken out building and contents insurance as part of your landlord insurance. However, if you've only taken out tenant protection, that won't cover you if the building is damaged, or if the items inside are damaged or stolen. In that case, you would need to add either building insurance or contents insurance depending on your needs.

• Do you need landlord and home insurance if you live in the same building?

  If you live in the same building where your rental properties are located, you should make sure your personal home is insured in addition to your rental properties – meaning you'll need two separate policies.

  Speak to your insurer first though. It may be able to set you up with a custom policy to suit a variety of living situations.

• What is the difference between landlord insurance and tenants insurance?

  Landlord insurance refers to a group of products that covers three areas: the building, the contents and any issues caused by the tenants. The insurance for the latter is known as tenants insurance or tenants protection, and is simply one of these three subsets.

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Written by

Gary Ross Hunter

Editor, Insurance & Innovations

Gary Ross Hunter was an editor at Finder, specialising in insurance. He’s been writing about life, travel, home, car, pet and health insurance for over 6 years and regularly appears as an insurance expert in publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian and news.com.au. Gary holds a Kaplan Tier 2 General Advice General Insurance certification which meets the requirements of ASIC Regulatory Guide 146 (RG146). See full bio

Gary Ross's expertise

Gary Ross has written 725 Finder guides across topics including:

• Health, home, life, car, pet and travel insurance
• Managing the cost of living

Co-written by

Alexandra Koster

Publisher

Alexandra Koster was Finder's publisher for car, home and pet insurance. She has a Tier 1 certification in General Insurance, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney. Her hobbies include reading Product Disclosure Statements and deciphering complicated insurance lingo to help people save on their insurance so that they can spend their money on better things – like dogs. See full bio