The common areas of a condominium are semi-public spaces: residents, guests and couriers pass through them every day – and from time to time uninvited visitors too. Broken-into storage rooms, a pram stolen from the stairwell, a damaged door entry unit, prised-open letterboxes: burglary and criminal damage losses are rarely huge, but they are all the more irritating. Let us look at what the building's insurance can do about them.
- The cover typically applies to burglary and criminal damage losses affecting property owned by the building and kept in the common areas.
- Residents' own belongings – in a storage room or a corridor – usually fall to their home insurance, on that policy's terms.
- The key questions: what counts as a “locked” space, what level of security the insurer expects, and what limits apply.
What does the building's policy protect – and what does it not?
The building's cover applies to the community's property: the equipment of the common areas, from the cleaning machine to the door entry control unit, and the commonly owned installations and structural elements. Residents' personal belongings – a bicycle in the storage room, a pram in the corridor – are usually not the building's business but a matter for the owner's home insurance, and there too typically with conditions (a locked room, for instance). It is worth communicating this boundary to residents as well – the owner information template touches on it – because most disappointments are born of this misunderstanding.
The insurance concept of burglary
In insurance terms, “burglary” typically means that the perpetrator enters the locked space by force against property (breaking open a door or window, dismantling a fixture), using a false key, or using an unlawfully obtained key; an item that disappears from a storage room left open typically counts as simple theft, not burglary – the exact definition is always given by the specific policy terms. Policy terms may also tie payment to security levels: what lock, what door, possibly what grille is needed up to a given amount. The building therefore has a double task: to match the cover to its real situation, and to meet the security requirements – otherwise the cover lives on paper but not in practice.
Criminal damage: burglary's little brother
Attempted entry usually comes with damage – a forced door, a chiselled lock, broken glass – and these losses arise even if nothing ends up missing. Criminal damage cover is made for these; deliberate damage without any intention to break in – tagging, a kicked-in dent – is already the territory of vandalism cover. The line between the two differs from quote to quote, so it is worth looking at them together when comparing, with glass breakage alongside.
In a claim: the police and documentation
In a burglary claim insurers typically expect a report to the police – without it claims handling gets off to a hard start. The right order: leaving the scene untouched as far as possible, photos, notifying the police, then reporting the claim through the insurer's claims line and online claims portal, with the details of the police report. From the building's side, prevention pays here too: working locks, lighting, orderly key management – the details are in the loss prevention checklist.
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