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Updated Aug. 30, 2024
If you’re spending a lot of money on any big-ticket purchase, you’ll likely want to protect it. A car, jewelry, art, and of course your home are those items that need insuring and protection.
If you are purchasing a condo, insurance is coverage that helps protect against losses and repair costs for a condominium unit. While not mandatory, much like house insurance, you’ll need it, not only for your protection, but because most major lenders require home buyers to show proof of insurance before a mortgage is approved.
And like any insurance product, the insurance company assesses the likelihood of you needing to make a claim in the event of theft, property damage or personal injury, and they provide a quote based on that assessment.
Condo insurance typically extends coverage to your possessions, even when you are travelling with them, or they are being stored in your storage locker. It also considers that you are living in a shared building with multiple other people and the unique risks that accompany that.
You do not need insurance for the physical structure of your condo building or any common areas. These are covered by condominium corporation insurance (sometimes called strata insurance). You contribute to condo corporation insurance via a portion of your condo fees.
Condo insurance is cheaper than home insurance. On an average, condo insurance costs between $30 and $50 per month, depending upon your coverage requirements and assets covered.
There are many types of condo insurance you’ll want to consider depending on your specific circumstances:
There are also optional coverages if your basic insurance is lacking, or you want to boost your policy for ultimate protection:
Finding the cheapest condo insurance in Canada starts with comparison shopping. Sites like RATESDOTCA find and compare the best rates to save you time and hassle, all in one search. A few bits of information on your condo insurance needs and voila, a current list of quotes from providers offering the cheapest rates in the country.
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Have you gone shopping lately? Everything is more expensive than it was a year ago – everything. Supply chain issues, wars, COVID lockdowns in Asia, and climate change are all affecting how much we pay for basic goods and services.
The same is true for condo insurance in Canada. Despite housing prices coming down somewhat as interest rates have risen, the amount to insure condos have been on the rise.
Let’s talk climate change. In Barrie, Ontario last summer, a tornado ripped through the area $100 million in insured costs. On the other side of the province, BC has experienced some of its worst weather in generations resulting in estimated costs of $450 million.
Over the past 15 years, insurance claims resulting from severe weather have more than quadrupled. The Insurance Bureay of Canada says yearly insured catastrophic losses in Canada is $2 billion – most of this due to water-related damage. In comparison, in the 15 years from 1983 and 2008, Canadian insurers paid out an average of about $422 million a year in losses related to severe weather.
These once in a lifetime (but not so much anymore) weather events are being looked at by insurers as riskier, more frequent events that need to be incorporated into the price of condo insurance in Canada. There are even cases where insurance companies denied insurance to condo owners, who have not experienced an event such as a flood, because they lived in a high-risk area.
According to an Eli Report, strata insurance premiums are on the rise anywhere from 50 per cent to 300 per cent.
During the pandemic, and even now, many homeowners, including those living in condos began looking at their surroundings and making changes. According to Statistics Canada, in 2021, Canadians applied for almost 213,000 residential alteration and improvements permits. As renovations increase and the value of your home increases, so do your condo insurance premiums.
Fining rates that work for you, even as prices have gone up, starts here at RATESDOTCA where we can show you the cheapest condo rates insurance rates in Canada.
Here’s what else you need to know about condo insurance
If you live in one of Canada’s large cities, you can get annual coverage starting around $25 per month with a basic policy providing $50,000 worth of contents coverage. Increasing your contents coverage, or adding optional endorsements will cause your premiums to rise.
Not necessarily. In fact, Ontarians living near Toronto have the lowest home insurance premiums in the province while those in the Northern and Southern regions are paying the most.
These are the core findings from the RATESDOTCA interactive map tool, Home Insuramap, which generates estimated annual home, condo and tenant insurance premiums for each postal code zone in Ontario.
In fact, the average condo premium in Ontario in 2022 was $297/year.
Also, while location is one of the key factors that home insurance carriers consider when determining a premium, a high crime rate and increasing incidents of severe weather also account for why home insurance is more expensive in smaller cities throughout, Ontario, for example.
Nobody can claim to offer the cheapest condo insurance without first knowing a few details about you and your home. We ask the same questions as the insurance companies, and show you accurate quotes based on the information you have provided. Simply pick the cheapest rate and we will connect you with the provider. For additional savings, consider bundling your condo insurance with your car insurance.
Filing a condo insurance claim is similar to filing a homeowners’ insurance claim, but with one key difference: you must determine whether the damage is covered by your personal policy or the policy of your condo association. If your property has been damaged or feel you need to speak with your insurance company take the following steps to file a condo insurance claim:
Yes, condo insurance will cover appliances because they are considered personal property.
It’s important to do an assessment of your assets within your condo and decide how much coverage is necessary to protect your belongings, including interiors and fixtures etc.
Some real estate agencies feel a good estimation is to assume $40,000 in personal property for the first 1,000 square feet of your condo and then add $5,000 for each additional 500 square feet.
There is no legal requirement for condo insurance. However, if you have a mortgage, the lender will often require that you have it. Even if you are mortgage-free, condo insurance is strongly recommended to protect you and your possessions.
Residential title insurance protects the buyer (and mortgage lender) against problems that may arise during the transfer of property ownership, including title fraud and losses associated with survey issues. You might need this when buying a new residence, but it is not the same as condo insurance.
There are two types of condominium insurance, and people often get confused:
1. Corporate condo insurance is the same as strata insurance. This type of policy is taken out by your condo board to protect the physical structure of the building, and any communal areas.
2. Condo or condominium insurance (without the “corporate” bit) is designed for individual condo owners, and it fills in the gaps where your condo’s corporate insurance falls short. It protects you, your personal unit, and the possessions within it.
Condo insurance in Canada will cover those things that reside within your condo – personal belongings, fixtures etc. It is for those things that you need personal condo insurance.
However, you do not need insurance for the physical structure of your condo building or any common areas. These are covered by condominium corporation insurance. Your condo maintenance fees pay for that.
Owner’s increased improvement coverage is designed to cover any upgrades you have made to your condo, whether that is installing nicer light fixtures, upgrading the flooring, or anything else that costs money and adds value. Some of these upgrades will be covered by a standard policy, but if you make a lot of expensive improvements or renovations, it is advisable to increase this coverage..
If you live on the ground floor, or below ground level, sewer backup coverage is extremely important. It only takes one careless unit owner to flush a diaper down the toilet, and suddenly your unit is flooded with sewage and waste.
While strata insurance will cover the cost of clearing the blockage (assuming the pipes are outside of your condo unit), they won’t cover expenses associated with cleaning sewage water from your apartment, or replacing your soiled belongings.
If you live on a high floor, the likelihood of sewage water reaching your unit is small (all drains below your unit would have to be blocked in order for the sewage to reach you), but you are still at risk. Firstly, your storage locker is probably at ground level. Additionally, if the lobby gets flooded with sewage, you will not be able to access your unit, and if you don’t have sewer backup coverage, you would not be eligible for help with temporary living expenses.
Overland water is any water that comes into your condo from outside of the building, typically a result of rainfall. If you live on a low floor, especially if you are near a river that could flood, it is advisable to have this coverage. Condo corporation insurance should cover structural repairs following a flood, but it won’t cover flood damage to your furniture, electronics, or anything else in your unit, which is where overland flood protection comes in.
Ontario has never experienced a catastrophic earthquake, and it is not included in standard condo insurance policies for that reason. Periodic tremors, especially in eastern Ontario, have caused some damage in the past, but modern buildings are designed to absorb the shocks without damaging the interior units.
However, if you live on the west coast, earthquakes are a very real threat and you should consider adding this coverage to your policy. In the lower mainland of British Columbia, all property insurance companies require significant earthquake deductibles.
The owner’s personal insurance policy does not extend to you or your belongings. You need tenant insurance, also called renter’s insurance. The good news is you do not need a lease to get tenant insurance, and it is very affordable.
*Shoppers who obtained a condo insurance quote on RATESDOTCA from January to December 2023 saved an average amount of $125. The average savings amount represents the difference between the shoppers’ average lowest quoted premium and the average of the second and third lowest quoted premiums generated by RATESDOTCA. Excludes home and tenant insurance.
Joel Kranc is a freelance writer and content provider who has worked with RATESDOTCA since 2019. He holds an MA in political science from the University of Toronto and a film certificate from New York University.
He has been published in and worked for such companies as CNN, Rogers Media, Institutional Investor Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Infrastructure Investor, BenefitsPRO Magazine, Global Finance Magazine, With Intelligence, the CPP Investment Board, Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan, and many more financial services and industry publications.
He is the author of "Retirement Planning in 8 Easy Steps," which, when released in 2015, was No. 11 on the Publisher's Weekly US Bestseller List for Business and Finance, beating out Mark Cuban's "How to Win at the Sport of Business."
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