Insurance is very frustrating thing to deal with. We inherited my MIL's condo years ago and had it rented out - it barely paid for itself. We had some insurance. 3.5 years ago a plumber apprentice got a fire going and it burned off the top floor of the 4 story, 50 unit building. Water damage destroyed the rest of the units. It turned out the condo association had been told a week prior to the fire that they were underinsured as a group but hadn't had time to do anything about it. Now after some court battles (more to come), some foreclosures, and a lot of wrangling, we will get to re-occupy our unit next week. We've paid almost as much as MIL originally paid for her unit, plus our insurance paid as much as we had covered. Our insurance even paid for a year's lost rent, some storage and replacement of quite a few items. But we have still had a pretty mean bill out of pocket - no banks would make a loan. Some folks had no insurance. We are looking forward to having the unit again. Hope we can get it rented out some time soon. Now that its livable, the taxes will go back up, we'll have monthy bills on it again, and I suppose we should insure it even better than before. Sure miss the 2.5 yrs lost rent and I'm feeling a pinched wallet like never before. Bounced 3 checks 2 wks ago - first time ever in my life and I'm 56. Also have some other bills due and we still have to furnish this condo! We'll be garage saling for sure. I never felt so much in a corner before - it snuck up on me. But I sure do feel for those folks who had no insurance - I think a couple owners were out as much as $300,000 +, there were some real fancy units on the top floor.
So I HATE paying insurance but seeing folks who didn't, I guess I'll keep up my payments. We would have lost the condo totally if we hadn't had some insurance.
