Home insurance typically covers property damage, personal belongings, liability, and additional living expenses if your home becomes damaged or uninhabitable. Each policy is different but typically fire, lightning, hail, wind, smoke, vandalism, explosion and riot/civil commotion is covered. Most policies also include theft and some kind of coverage for accidental overflow or discharge of water. Many exclude sinkhole coverage. Almost all homeowners policy exclude weather related flood insurance, but some carriers will allow an endorsement to add flood as a covered peril.

Your condo association insures the exterior walls of your condo building. A Unit Owners condo policy, also known as an HO6 policy, offers to repair your floors, built in items like cabinetry, plumbing and electrical fixtures and anything else within the walls of your condo if a covered claim occurs.

In Florida, it is important to cover your unit from the faults of your neighbors also. If your neighbor causes damage to your unit, then it is likely your policy will need to pay for the damages first. On the flip side, if you are negligent and cause damage to another unit owner’s property, then the liability coverage of your policy may be able to extend to the damages.

We say this all the time, “the X zone is still a flood zone, so you should get flood insurance”. The X flood zone means that your chances of flooding are low but not unlikely. Flooding can occur due to unusual weather conditions, new construction in your area, improper storm drains or inadequate maintenance of flood control areas. FEMA is only required to monitor flood maps every 5 years and a lot of things can change in Florida in 5 years! Flood insurance in X zones is affordable and policy premiums will only increase each year to keep up with losses that FEMA has already incurred.