Hey - cool - I’ve been in there too. Usually waiting for a movie. 
I will have insurance as soon as we’re renting/owning a place (I’m not “Mrs” quite yet, and I currently live with the parents).
My brother and his wife purchased a house last fall. 2 days after they moved in a water filter busted and flooded the entire downstairs with about 2 inches of water. They were very glad to have insurance.
Correction, if you have a mortgage you have fire insurance.* Your bank could care less if you insure your belongings, and if you have liability insurance.
*In the US most homeowners buy homeowner’s insurance, but fire is what is required.
And a related answer… I’m an insurance adjuster and I see what happens when people don’t keep good records of their belongings. I strongly recommend videotaping/listing your personal property whether it’s required or not. Receipts and owner’s manuals can help too. I’m not aware of any companies making it a requirement but that doesn’t mean that yours doesn’t.
And one more tidbit of advice. Do NOT keep the videotape, pictures, list, whatever in your home. Rent a safe-deposit box at the bank, give it to a friend or relative but don’t keep it in your home. It won’t do you much good if the house burns down.
BTW, even if you do have homeowner’s insurance, check to see if it will still cover what you need every so often. My daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s house burned down the street from us last year. They were painting the fence, and left a rag near the water heater. Though they were there, and called the fire department immediately, they had to raze the house. That scared us into checking, and then increasing our coverage, which was a bit out of date.
House and contents insurance, here. My company kept trying to tell me I’d save money if I got car insurance as well, but they’ve given up now they realise I don’t drive and don’t have a car.
Why I insure the house? Biggest asset I own, and I was brought up with my mother paying a mortgage and therefore having the compulsory insurance. Seems like a good idea to me.
Yes, homeowner’s insurance! We also have $250,000/$500,000 on the cars, plus a $1,000,000 umbrella policy (costs an additional $150.00 per year). Why? Your homeowner’s insurance is also your personal liability insurance. Ever see auto injury victims with permanent disabilities? What if you had to pay a judgment for that kind of money? We’re both good drivers, but Sh!t Happens, and I don’t want to lose my house because of it.
They must have paid off their mortgage, because you cannot get a loan without getting insurance. All I gotta say to them is, DUH.
The video tape is a good idea, but be sure to add a running commentary in case things aren’t clear. For example- you see a big TV on the tape, and you hear “That’s the Sony model XYZ, bought it last year, 2005…”
We have friends who lost their house in a wildfire a few years back. They had lived in the house for 40 years. During the evacuation, their son raced in and was able to grab some pictures off the walls, two computer towers and the dog. That’s it. An entire life together went up in smoke and ash. 
We have very high limits on our cars, a bunch on the house, and at least a million in the umbrella policy. It’s just good sense.
Here’s what I don’t quite understand. Say I have a $40,000 coverage policy for my rental unit. The place burns to the ground. Do they cut you a check for $40,000? If not, how (besides video and photo evidence) does the insurance company know what you had? How do you estimate the value of something like furniture (we got ours used, but nice, so no store receipt or idea what the original cost was)?
We carry insurance, but I"m never quite clear on what happens exactly if you do need to make a claim. What would make the whole process the easiest in the event of a disaster or does it entirely depend on your insurance company?
Unfortunately, the insurance company doesn’t automatically cut you a check for $40,000. Most of the time, there is still some evidence left after a fire to document a lot of your possessions. Plus we also use common sense. If you live in a $40,000 house, I wouldn’t expect you to own the Hope Diamond. Surprisingly, most house fires that I see are damaged more severely by either (1) smoke, or (2) water from the fire department than the actual fire so many of your belongings are still there to be inventoried.
Photographing (or videotaping) your belongings helps you as much as it helps the insurance company document your claim. You are going to likely be devastated after a fire and many of your possessions you will have forgotten. A photo can trigger your memory and make your job of preparing an inventory of your belongings much easier. I recommend you even open your closets and cupboard doors to photograph your stuff. Photographing seasonal stuff (ie Christmas decorations) can be helpful too.
If you have anything that is out of the ordinary for your type of home, absolutely document it the best way you can to avoid any conflicts with the insurance company. If you have Great Aunt Helen’s handmade grandfather clock that was brought to the United States on the Mayflower by Christopher Columbus :dubious: , get it appraised and again, keep the appraisal somewhere other than your house.
I’ve worked for 5 different companies in my career and can tell you that for at least these 5, the process has been the same. The most important thing you can do is keep good records, a photo inventory, and work with your adjuster to settle your claim. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have nine heads and bear the mark 666.
As others have pointed out, I don’t think you can get a mortgage in the US without proof of insurance - banks don’t like the idea of their investment being wiped out.
That said, I recently read that many homes in the US were far over-insured.
For instance - say you bought a house for $100,000 and now it is worth $300,000. So you would assume you now need $300,000 worth of insurance. Wrong!
A good part of the value of your house is the land it is sitting on. Your actual house - the cost of re-building it - is far less - perhaps only $60-80,000 depending on its size and current cost of building materials. You only need enough insurance to cover the cost of actually re-building the house. The article I read mentioned how almost all new homeowners fall into this trap and want to insure the house for the amount they paid to buy it, forgetting to take into consideration the value of the land the home is sitting on.
I live in an apartment and definitely have tenant insurance. Why? When I younger and renting, I didn’t feel any of my second hand crap was worth anything and didn’t really consider that anything might happen. Then there was a bizarre flood that destroyed the two basement apartments in my building - 5 feet of water and sewage (I lived on the top floor so lost power and water for 3 days, but no damage other than spoiled food)… Friends of mine lived in both apartments and everything was destroyed. Neither had insurance . Our building was evacuated and Red Cross put us in a hotel for a couple of days, and then the rental agency found them some scummy unrented apartment in a crappy area for a couple of months while their apartments were rebuilt.
Now, neither of them had anything that seemed of great value (old second hand furniture, college-type furnishings.) But, they lost absolutely everything. No shoes. No jackets. No clothes for work. No dishes. No beds. No furniture at all. Even though they had nothing in particular of great value, losses were in the thousands. One was a single mother making $10 an hour and receiving no support, and the other worked in a call centre. (And grrr. There was publicity, and people dropped off “donations” that were obviously just a way to avoid paying the drop off fee at the dump. Like mattresses reaking of urine, things that were moldy and broken. Nice.)
You can be damn sure my eyes were opened and I got tenant insurance immediately.
I don’t have insurance. I suppose I never really thought about it before.
I’m a renter. Nothing I own is particularly expensive. If I suffered a complete loss, it would sum up in the thousands of dollars, but it’s not something I couldn’t pay for. And if I suffered a theft, I’d just have to replace my computer and a few DVDs. Much less than the cost of my car, and I don’t have insurance on that, either.
My feeling is that I’ll probably be better in the long run if I avoid buying insurance for things I can afford to replace. It’ll suck if I’m unlucky, but I’ll deal with it.
Cyros, they couldn’t recover any clothing from the flood?
Nothing. The water and sewage stood in the apartment for 3 days, and a few other factors resulted in nothing being salvageable.
Tenant insurance only costs a few bucks a month, and in addition to covering your belongings, it can pay for accomodations, to replace food… all sorts of stuff. Of course, we’d be completely f**ked if we lost our belongings since we have zero savings & available credit. We’re too poor to not have insurance!
You don’t need car insurance to drive where you live?
As others have said, if you have a mortgage, you have insurance.
OP’s neighbor must have paid off the house. Sounds a bit silly not to insure it.
DOH!
I have buildings insurance.
My contents insurance has just lapsed, I’m in the process of selling up and realized that the cost of junking things is higher than the premium for insuring them.
The point about the re-build insurance value is a good one, sometimes a vacant plot is worth more than a zoned building.
As an example of that (vacant plot worth more than the building standing on it) is the guy in New York City who blew up his townhouse in Manhattan out of spite at his wife who was divorcing him. At the time, it was said here on the SDMB and in the papers that the vacant lot would net more than the landmarked building he destroyed.
As for me, I’ve got $25,000 of renter’s insurance, which is probably too high, as most everything I own is ten or more years old. But obviously, I don’t own the building, so I can’t imagine why the family in the OP didn’t have homeowner’s insurance, as presumably they did own their house.
I know a little about UK insurance, the policy to go for when it comes to contents is ‘new for old’
‘So f/cking what if my carpets are 5 years old, it will still cost $3,000 to replace them’
They’ll still stick in limits, but at least you’ll not have to search for a 3 year old dishwasher, a 4 year old fridge and a semi-knackered cooker.
I have liability insurance, as required by CA law. Damage to other people or their property I might cause while driving is covered, but my car itself is not. If it’s wrecked or stolen, I’ll just have to go buy another.
If I bought a house (presumably on credit), I would definitely insure that, since I could not afford to replace it if it were burned down or washed away. But my car and my electronics are within my means to replace. Even if they weren’t immediately replacable, I live in an area where I could do quite fine without either for as long as it took me to save up and replace them.