What Is Condo Insurance (HO-6 Coverage)?
Owning a condo means owning something in between a house and a rented apartment, and the insurance built for it reflects that split responsibility.
The short answer
Condo insurance, often called HO-6 coverage, is a policy designed for condominium owners that covers personal belongings, interior finishes and improvements the owner is responsible for, and liability, while the condo association’s master policy typically covers the building’s shared structure and common areas. The exact dividing line between what the owner insures and what the association insures depends on the association’s governing documents, so it varies from one condo building to another.
Why condo ownership splits the coverage
A condo owner typically owns the interior of their unit outright but shares ownership of the building’s exterior, roof, and common areas with every other owner in the building. The homeowners association usually carries a master policy covering those shared structural elements, funded through association dues. Because that master policy generally stops at the unit’s walls, or sometimes at the drywall depending on the association’s bylaws, the owner needs a separate policy to cover everything on their side of that line.
What HO-6 coverage typically includes
An HO-6 policy generally covers personal belongings inside the unit, liability if someone is injured inside the unit, and what’s often called “walls-in” coverage — improvements and betterments the owner made, like upgraded flooring, cabinetry, or fixtures beyond the building’s original finish. It often also includes loss-of-use coverage, which helps with living expenses if the unit becomes temporarily uninhabitable after a covered event. Because it fills the gap the master policy leaves, HO-6 coverage is sometimes described as a smaller, more targeted version of a standard homeowners policy.
Reading the master policy first
The amount of individual coverage a condo owner actually needs depends heavily on what the association’s master policy covers, which is why reviewing that document is a genuine first step rather than an afterthought. Some master policies are “bare walls,” covering only the building’s structural shell, while others are more comprehensive and include original fixtures and finishes. A gap between the two policies — something neither the master policy nor the individual HO-6 policy covers — is one of the more common and avoidable problems in condo ownership.
How it differs from a standard homeowners policy
A single-family homeowner insures the entire structure themselves, since there’s no association covering any shared portion. A condo owner instead insures a narrower slice of the property and relies on a group-funded master policy for everything else, similar in spirit to how a renters policy covers belongings and liability while a landlord’s policy covers the building itself. The premium for HO-6 coverage tends to reflect that narrower scope, though it varies with the unit’s value, location, and the specifics of the association’s own coverage.
The bottom line
Condo insurance exists specifically because ownership in a condo building is shared, and the coverage on either side of that split — the association’s master policy and the owner’s HO-6 policy — needs to line up without leaving a gap in between. Reading both documents together, rather than assuming one automatically covers what the other doesn’t, is the clearest way to see what’s actually protected.