The factors listed below may impact on your rental insurance policy:
- Your suburb’s median rent price: rents have a tendency of going up every year in Australia. The more rent you pay, the higher your insurance premium becomes.
- Whether your suburb falls in the flood/bushfire risk zone: many Australian homes are vulnerable to a range of potential natural hazards such as floods, bushfires, cyclones, storm surges and erosions (including sinkholes). If you’re renting in a hazard-prone area, it will reflect on your insurance policy.
- Your suburb’s crime rate: while the area you’re renting in might appear safe and quiet on the outside, the statistics might offer a different story. The higher the crime rate, the more your insurance policy costs.
- The actual cash value of your belongings versus replacement costs: this can sometimes be tricky to work out. Typically, the value of your possessions decreases with time while the price of replacement items grows. It is therefore crucial that you calculate your replacement costs as precisely as you can.
When you’re renting a house or unit or living in shared accommodation, fire and valuables theft are the two biggest risks you can potentially face. These risks can leave you unable to recoup total losses. This is why you need to take inventory of your belongings residing at the rental property to get their replacement value as accurate as possible. This involves the following steps:
- Document everything that you own for insurance purposes
- Keep the receipts and take photos of items to make sure there’s ample evidence that you’ve owned them in the first place.
