Building Insurance vs. Contents Insurance: Who Pays What in Your First Apartment

If your washing machine leaks in your first apartment and damages the parquet floor, two different insurance policies suddenly come into play, but only one of them is the tenant's responsibility. Not knowing the difference means taking out the wrong policy, or paying twice in the end.

Building insurance is the landlord's responsibility

Building insurance (Wohngebäudeversicherung) covers damage to the building itself: walls, floors, fixed pipes, the roof. It's taken out by the property owner and passed on proportionally to all tenants in the building through Nebenkosten, not negotiated or chosen individually by a single tenant. A tenant neither has to take out this policy nor can influence it; they simply carry a fraction of the premium through the annual Nebenkosten statement.

What's actually the tenant's responsibility

Anything you'd take with you when you move out is your own responsibility: furniture, electronics, clothing, but also fixed items you installed yourself, like an upgraded fitted kitchen. That's what contents insurance (Hausratversicherung) is for. A lease clause that makes taking it out mandatory is unenforceable: it violates Section 307 BGB as an unreasonable disadvantage to the tenant, and often also counts as a surprising clause under Section 305c BGB. On top of that, personal liability insurance covers damage the tenant causes to someone else's property, for example if that same leaking washing machine soaks the ceiling of the neighbor below.

The shared-flat special case: one policy for everyone, or one each

In a shared flat (WG), the question gets more complicated than for a single tenant. If everyone is listed as an equal tenant on the lease, a joint contents policy can cover the whole apartment, with the policyholder adding every flatmate by name to the policy. If instead one person is the primary tenant and the others are true subtenants with their own sublease, the primary tenant's contents policy typically won't automatically cover the subtenants' personal property, so each subtenant may need their own coverage for their room. Students still covered under a parent's policy should check in advance how much coverage that extends to, usually only a fraction of the parents' total insured sum.

What this means when a claim happens

If water damage from a defective pipe inside the wall occurs, repairing the wall is the landlord's building insurance's job. But if the tenant's carpet or a shelf gets damaged in the process, that falls to the tenant's own contents insurance, if they have one. Without contents insurance, the tenant bears that part of the damage entirely on their own, regardless of the fact that the building damage itself was covered through the landlord.

Our insurance coverage guide covers how much coverage actually makes sense and what it should cost, our first apartment cost guide has the full one-time and ongoing cost picture, and our Anmeldung guide covers the registration deadline that comes due around the same time.