A final word…….
Kiwipaul, I take on board what you say. Insurance is not my area of expertise & what I previously said may be a little simplistic.
About 15 years ago an investment unit I owned in an older building burnt out. Fortunately no-one was injured. The OC was self managed & OC insurances were organised by insurance brokers. I had landlords insurance – through the same firm of insurance brokers. The damage was extensive, took quite some time to properly repair & of course the unit could not be occupied during this time.
The units in the building were not fitted with fire-rated entry doors & the entry door to the unit was left open by the tenants as they escaped. This resulted in significant smoke damage to the common stairwell & also the units above as escaping occupants also left the doors to these units open. Between the OC insurance & the Landlord insurance the repairs to my unit were fully covered, as was the rent loss. The smoke damage to the stairwell was covered by the OC insurance.
I cannot recall if the smoke damage to upstairs units was covered by the OC insurance (although I think that walls/ceilings were covered but carpets were not). My tenants did not have contents insurance & some of the occupants of units above were uninsured.
If I did not have Landlords insurance my position would have been parlous & I would probably have had to sell the unit.
After this event the OC took it upon itself to have fire rated doors fitted to all units & to have a hard wired, interconnected smoke alarm system installed. An interesting point here is that the OC insurance paid for the fire-rated door to the unit which had had the fire even though the door only had smoke damage.
Sorry if this has been a little long winded but I think that it demonstrates the need to be properly insured for both owners & occupants.