‘Building insurance’ refers to insurance cover for the physical structure of your home. It can form part of many types of policies like home insurance, landlord insurance and strata insurance. Each type of building insurance is intended to insure the buildings on a property against a variety of scenarios and events (known as insured events).
| Home insurance | Strata insurance | Landlords insurance |
| Home insurance (also known as home building insurance) is cover for your home but not its contents. It can cover the bricks and mortar of your house as well as driveways and fixed outbuildings like garages, carports, in-ground pools and fencing. | Strata insurance covers shared property in domestic buildings (like apartments and townhouses) and commercial buildings (like offices). This means that damage sustained to communal areas such as driveways and stairwells may be covered in most circumstances. | Landlords Insurance includes all the benefits of home insurance, but for your rented-out investment property. Policies may include cover for flood, storms, fire and theft as well as cover specifically applicable to a tenanted property, such as loss of rent. |
When comparing a landlord insurance policy or home insurance policy with our comparison service, you’ll be able to see the listed events covered by each available policy.
In all its forms, building insurance provides financial protection against loss and damage from insured events up to a specified limit. However, there are some exclusions across the different types of building insurance products, depending on your level of cover.
The table below can give you an idea of the typical benefits of the different types of building insurance.
| Event/Damage | Home Building Insurance | Landlords Insurance | Strata Insurance |
| Fire damage | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Impacted walls and fixtures | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Flood damage | ✔ | ✔/Optional | ✔/Optional |
| In-ground swimming pools | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Damage to fences | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Fixed carpets and curtains | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Malicious damage | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Vandalism and damage from theft | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Damage from burst pipes and escape of liquid | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Damaged caused by removalists or renovations | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ |
| Legal liability cover if someone is injured in your home | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Damage from falling trees | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Removal of debris | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Temporary accommodation costs | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ |
These benefits can vary between insurers and are subject to the policy’s terms and conditions. For full details, please check the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) before purchasing any new policy or making an insurance claim.
Contents insurance is cover for the belongings in your home. If you’re a landlord and rent out your property furnished, you may want to think about adding this cover. Home owner-occupiers could also benefit from contents insurance. There are policies available that combine contents insurance with your building cover.
It’s best to refer to your policy’s PDS for a full list of exactly what you’re covered for.
The most compelling reason to have building insurance is to ensure you can financially recover from accidental loss or damage caused to your home by a variety of events, such as bushfires, fire, storms and flood.
Our free home insurance comparison tool makes it easy to see what’s covered under a home or landlords insurance policy and to find a competitive price from available policies.
If you live within a strata complex (such as a townhouse or studio apartment), check with your body corporate to see if your building is already covered under the strata policy. If you own the strata property, you should consider protecting it with building insurance; being insured can give you peace of mind knowing that you have cover for a range of natural disasters and damage from other events, including break-ins.
Sum insured is the replacement value of your insured property should it be completely damaged or destroyed. This should be the estimated amount it would cost you to rebuild your home to its former condition, not the market value of your home. It’s vital to ensure that this amount covers the full rebuilding costs of your home; otherwise, you’ll need to pay the extra cost out of your own pocket (known as underinsurance).
Many insurers offer a suite of optional extras to choose from – this is cover that you can add to your standard building insurance policy for broader coverage. These options can vary between insurers, but some common optional extras can include:
The price of building insurance is unique to each home and property, determined by several factors, including:
Whether you need home, landlord or another insurance entirely, you can use our home insurance comparison tool to browse and compare a range of products. You can weigh up their features, prices and more all in one place!
