I am a tenant, what home insurance should I take out?

I am a tenant, what home insurance should I take out?
If you are renting your accommodation, whether it is an apartment, a house, a shared apartment or a student residence, most of the time you are required by law to take out home insurance. Insurers offer a wide range of guarantees, ranging from simple rental liability to very comprehensive comprehensive insurance, and it is sometimes difficult to navigate between the offers and their pricing. Follow the guide !

Why insure your accommodation?
Degradation or wear and tear, fire, water damage, break-in… When you move into a new home, you expose yourself to risks of various kinds. Their probability of materializing may seem low, but it is very real! And the bill can then turn out to be extremely heavy and often beyond the reach of a regular budget.

Home insurance is therefore absolutely essential: for a monthly amount that remains accessible, you cover yourself against most of the risks to which your home is exposed. That is, in the event of a claim, your insurance will foot the bill.
What does home insurance cover?
Civil liability
Legal principle
The principle of civil liability aims to repair any damage caused to a third party by a private person. It is governed by the Civil Code, certain provisions of which have remained unchanged since 1804! And in particular the famous article 1240: “Any fact of the man, which causes damage to another, obliges the one through whose fault he arrived to repair it. "

It is therefore the perpetrator of a fault who is legally bound to remedy it. But the Civil Code also adds two provisions:

The acts may have been committed "through negligence or recklessness", that is, they need not have been committed intentionally for the person to be held liable;
Responsibility is also engaged if the acts were committed by "people for whom we must answer, or things we keep", which includes children, pets, but also domestic workers and any object that you own or keep.

Rental liability and private life
Home insurance contracts systematically contain at least a rental civil liability guarantee, covering the damage that you could inflict on the home in the event of a disaster, thus protecting you and your landlord.

Your rental liability is also not engaged in certain cases:

Force majeure
Construction defect
No fault in the event of an explosion
Damage caused by a device that you are not required to maintain
However, it is common for home insurance, especially multi-risk contracts (see below), to cover your civil liability beyond simple accommodation, for your entire private life.

There are in fact two main types of civil liability: professional liability, for acts relating to professional activity, and private life liability, which concerns everything relating to extra-professional life.
In concrete terms, the insurance will cover all damage caused to a third party in the context of your private or family life and for which you or your relatives are responsible. Here are a few examples:
You damage merchandise displayed in a store;
You break the camera that a friend lent you;
A child injures a friend while playing at school;
Your dog runs over and injures an elderly person on the street.
At a minimum, it is desirable that you take out insurance against the damage that you could cause to other neighboring accommodation in the event of a disaster. Remember to check the extent of the guarantee in your contract, and take out the appropriate options if necessary!
 Good to know
Your liability coverage may be canceled under certain conditions, in particular if the damage was caused willfully, or in the course of a risky activity.
What does my private civil liability cover?
Guarantee against rental risks
“Rental risks” correspond to the various risks to which your home is exposed. The rental risk guarantee thus aims to cover the damage caused to your home when one of these risks materializes.
The main guarantees that are included, sometimes as an option, in home insurance, are as follows:
The fire-explosion guarantee, which also includes the fall of lightning or the damage caused by extinguishing a fire;
The theft guarantee, which covers the disappearance, destruction or deterioration of movable property resulting from theft;
Water damage coverage, in the event of a leak, rupture of a pipe or infiltration;