We are now just about two weeks in to having all the new students renting our properties.
Ottawa is a great city for students, and it can be a great city for landlords who rent to students.
It can be a very different experience for landlords compared to renting out to the jaded general public.
It rare for a student to have the time or motivation to manipulate and use the Landlord and Tenant Board as a weapon against their landlord. Unlike some other Ontario tenants out there.
There’s more!
The University of Ottawa is one of our nations’ best schools.
Carleton University has grown immensely over the years and now offers some of the best programmes in not only Canada, but in North America.
Students and Tenant Insurance
According to the Ontario Landlords Association many students aren’t aware of the value of getting tenant insurance.
The Ontario Landlords Association advises the following:
Student landlords have a great opportunity to ‘educate’ their student tenants and protect themselves (and help students know how to protect themselves).
This is great advice.
Tenant Insurance
Many students aren’t aware of tenant insurance.
Even if they know they might disregard it as an extra and useless expense. Remember, students are often on a tight budget and every cent counts.
Help Your Student Tenants Protect Themselves
A simple phone call can protect students from all kinds of mishaps in and around campus.
There’s the obvious— fire, water damage and theft—concerns but there are also liability concerns.
If someone is injured on the premises or a toilet floods over and causes water damage to a few floors below, it can hugely expensive and time consuming without insurance.
Not every rental unit problem is the landlord’s responsibility either.
“There can be a lot of misconceptions out there,” one insurance expert said. “It depends who was found to be negligent. Tenants can be held responsible.” Without proper insurance, tenants who are found to be at-fault are on the hook for damages.
Tenant insurance is especially important for students because student housing can be more risky than single-family homes thanks to high turnover rates—not to mention the parties.
Protecting possessions from theft is reason enough to seek out coverage.
Students may not have accumulated many material possessions but the belongings they do have is usually pretty valuable like notebook computers, TVs, textbooks and even musical instruments.
For those trying to make ends meet, tenants may be tempted to skip tenant’s insurance to try to cut costs.
Explain to them they should consider the cost of replacing their laptop or smartphone if they were robbed.
Now is a good time to hold class to teach basics of tenant’s insurance and ensure your renters have the right coverage in place to protect themselves.
To Discuss Insurance, Student Housing, and Other Issues Welcome to the Ontario Landlord Forum