Contents insurance in Australia

Direct answer

Do you need contents-only cover or building cover? You need the policy that pays for the object that would be damaged. Building cover is about the dwelling and many things fixed to it. Contents cover is about the goods you would take if you moved house — furniture, clothes, electronics, kitchenware, and the personal effects the PDS agrees to treat as contents. A renter almost never needs to insure the landlord’s walls. An owner-occupier who buys contents only has left the roof uninsured.

Compare contents quotes only after you have written that occupancy down. Then line up the inventory, the specified-item rules, portable cover, and the excess. Rank the premiums those configurations produced. Do not rank a renter’s contents quote against an owner’s building quote and call one cheaper.

This page is general information. It is not a quote or personal advice. Read the disclaimer if you need the boundary said plainly.

Contents-only versus building — the occupancy question

The AIO question is usually a renter’s question, or a first-home owner’s question, and the answers diverge.

If you rent, the landlord (or their insurer) typically carries the building. Your event is theft of your goods, fire damage to your furniture, water damage to your clothes, liability questions that sometimes sit inside a contents wording, and the cost of temporary accommodation if the PDS offers it to a tenant. You compare contents products. Buying building cover on a property you do not own is usually the wrong document.

If you own and occupy, storm damage to the roof and fire damage to the sofa are two events. Many households buy a packaged pair. The pair still has two sums insured and two definition chapters. See the home insurance hub for flood, rebuild cost and building excesses. This hub stays with the movable layer.

If you own and let the place, neither a standard owner-occupier home policy nor a renter’s contents policy is automatically the right landlord wording. Loss of rent and malicious damage by tenants live on the landlord hub.

Strata complicates the furniture. Common property is often on a body-corporate policy. Your lot contents are still yours. Some fixtures inside a lot sit in a grey zone between the strata policy and your contents wording — check both documents rather than assuming.

What “contents” usually means — and what it quietly does not

PDSs define contents. Marketing pages summarise. The definition is the product.

Typical inclusions, always subject to the wording in front of you, are household goods, clothing, furniture, and personal effects at the insured address. Typical arguments at claim time are:

• Fixtures versus contents. A built-in oven may be building; a plug-in appliance may be contents. Carpets and blinds go either way depending on the PDS and whether you are an owner or a tenant.
• Tools, business stock, and home-office equipment. Some wordings give a small business-use limit and stop. If you earn from the room, say so on the form.
• Collections, jewellery, watches, cameras, bicycles, and portable electronics. These often have sub-limits unless you specify them. A contents sum of “enough for the house” can still pay a fraction of one watch.
• Cash, documents, and set-pair items. Special limits are common.
• Motor vehicles, aircraft, and animals. Usually not contents. Pets are a different aisle.

Write an inventory before you open a quote form. Room by room is tedious and is also the only honest sum insured. Photograph serial numbers. Keep receipts where you have them. Underinsurance on contents is less famous than underinsurance on buildings and just as real: a low sum looks cheap until the house is empty. Read underinsurance for how average clauses can reach a partial claim.

Specified items, portable cover and the away-from-home problem

Two mechanics separate contents quotes that look alike on a tile.

Specified (or listed) valuables raise the limit for a named item in return for a description, often a valuation, and a premium that reflects the item. If you compare a quote that specifies a bicycle and a quote that does not, you are not comparing the same promise. The cheaper one may simply decline or cap the bike.

Portable contents / personal effects away from home is often optional. A laptop stolen at a café, a camera on a day trip, a pram at the shops — these events are not automatically “contents at the address”. Some packages include a modest portable limit; some sell it as an extra; some exclude it. Travel insurance, if you also hold it, is a different contract with its own exclusions. Do not assume one pays because the other exists.

If you already have phone-plan insurance or a credit-card extra on a device, inventory that overlap before you buy a third promise for the same handset. Dual insurance is a coordination problem, not a double payout. The how to compare page treats overlap as step one.

New for old, indemnity and the payout you think you bought

Contents can pay new-for-old (replace with a new equivalent) or indemnity (allow for age and wear), or a mix by item type. Clothing and linen are often treated less generously than furniture. Pair-and-set clauses can limit you to the damaged item, not the matching three.

Neither basis is universally better. Indemnity can look cheaper on the quote and smaller on the cheque. New-for-old can still be capped by the sum insured and by sub-limits. Put “settlement basis” on the sheet next to the sum.

Weather, theft and the events renters actually claim

Contents claims are not only burglary. Water from a storm that entered after roof damage, escape of liquid from a burst pipe, fire, and accidental damage (if bought) are frequent household events. The weather nouns still matter. Flood can apply to contents as well as buildings. A renter in a ground-floor unit who skips flood because “the landlord has building cover” may still lose the furniture. Confirm flood on your contents schedule. The home hub explains why storm and flood are not synonyms; the same literacy belongs here.

Theft wording may require forced entry, may treat theft by a guest differently, and may ask about security devices you declared. An unanswered deadbolt question is not trivia.

Liability cover sometimes sits inside contents products — injury to a visitor, damage you cause as a tenant to the landlord’s building, subject to exclusions. It is not public-liability cover for a business, and it is not a reason to skip reading the chapter.

Excesses, waiting periods and the cash you fund first

Contents excesses are usually simpler than car excesses, but they still stack: standard, voluntary, sometimes imposed after claims, sometimes a special theft or portable excess. A low premium with an excess you cannot fund is not cheaper the week the laptop disappears. See excess versus premium.

Waiting periods are less central on general contents than on health or pet products, but some extras and some new policies have short qualifying periods or exclude events already in progress. If you switch, do not cancel the old policy until the new one is on risk. A gap is an uninsured week, not a saving.

Feature checklist (not a league table)

Fill the price column from quotes you were given. We will not invent one. That refusal is methodology, not a missing feature.

Questions to ask before you buy

1. Am I insuring goods I own in a building someone else insures — or do I also need building cover?
2. What is on the inventory, and which items sit above the unspecified sub-limit?
3. If the laptop leaves the house, is portable cover on this quote?
4. Is flood named on the contents schedule?
5. Is settlement new-for-old for the items I would actually claim?
6. What excess applies to theft, and can I fund it?
7. Have I already paid for overlapping gadget cover on a phone plan or card?
8. If I move house, how do I change the address without a gap?

Those questions belong on a printed sheet beside two PDSs. The quotes checklist is the reusable version.

PDS, exclusions and how a contents claim is evidenced

Collect the PDS, schedule and any endorsement. Search for “contents”, “specified”, “portable”, “we will not”, “flood”, and “pair and set”. The PDS guide is the reading method.

Exclusions that surprise contents claimants include gradual damage, vermin, unscratched “mysterious disappearance” without evidence of theft, and items in the open air. Read the list against the way you actually live, not against a brochure kitchen.

Claims are inventory work. Photograph the scene, keep the police report number for theft, and do not bin damaged goods until the insurer has said so. Claims basics is the general map. If the internal complaint process finishes without agreement, AFCA is the usual external forum for many general-insurance disputes.

What we will not tell you

We will not name a cheapest contents brand. We will not guess what “typical contents” in a two-bedroom unit are worth. We will not say portable cover is “usually included”. We will not tell a renter they “must” buy a particular limit — that depends on what they own, which we do not know.

For official education, use MoneySmart. For a placeholder commercial path, use Compare home cover knowing it is a stub.

After you buy

Read the schedule: address, sum insured, specified items, portable option, excess. When you buy a bicycle, an engagement ring, or a camera that sits above the sub-limit, specifying it is a mid-term task, not a renewal surprise. When you move, change the address before the van is emptied into an unlisted postcode.