Accidentally Caused Water Damage in Condo Rental-No Insurance
Hoping to get some advice because I’m extremely scared about how much this is going to cost. I’m currently unemployed so this will be a big financial hit.
What happened was that I accidentally knocked over a pretty full bucket of water in the kitchen and of course the water ended up on the floor and also inside the cabinet next to it. I cleaned it up immediately and just as I was finishing up the management office person knocked on my door asking if I had a leak, because water apparently had leaked to the ceiling of the downstairs unit. After they left I returned to my room only to find that water had seeped there as well, so I cleaned that up again only to find that some of the laminate flooring had started to warp already. I did my best to dry everything and ran a fan near the area to promote air circulation as well, but when I woke up today to check again the warping was still as is.
I notified my landlord and asked my roommate about our insurance policy, as when I moved in she told me she would buy insurance for the both of us, and I just believed her. Turns out the policy only has her name on it so I’m not actually insured, so this puts me in a very vulnerable position where I might have to pay out of pocket for both a flooring replacement as well as the damage to the ceiling downstairs.
My roommate did mention that there was a known leak that the landlord told her about almost two years ago that was in the cabinet that I spilled water into, and that might have contributed to the whole matter. The landlord had told them that they would fix it but didn’t really do anything about it for the past two years. I moved in only a year ago so this was also the first time I had heard of the issue. She said she would try talking to the insurance company first and see if it’s possible to make a claim but I have my doubts.
The landlord also came today to inspect the unit themselves and told us that they think the whole bedroom will need a floor replacement. Half of the room actually should be unaffected so I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it would be possible to only replace half of the room? Also, would anyone be able to estimate how much it would cost if I had to pay for the whole flooring replacement? The size of the room is around 91.5 square feet but there’s a 11.68 square feet built in closet that doesn’t look to be affected at all. Would also appreciate if anyone could recommend some trustworthy places that could do a quote so I can get an estimate of how much it might actually cost, I’m in the North York area.
For the ceiling downstairs I don’t have any information about what the damage caused was yet other than there was a leak in the ceiling and the owner downstairs is very unhappy because they are trying to sell the unit. I have no idea what will happen next and I’m actually moving out next month as well. Please let me know if anyone has had any similar experiences to this or if there’s any resources that I should know of for situations like this. Thank you in advance to anyone who replies.
[EDIT/UPDATE] There’s a lot of people who seem to be thinking my roommate was leading me on and is throwing me under the bus, I just want to clarify that it was an honest mistake where she thought the policy was for the whole unit i.e. covering both me and her, and also the landlord had no problem with it when she sent the policy to them. I am at fault as well for not checking the policy myself. My roommate has been doing her best to help throughout this process, and I don’t want or expect her to lie about the situation to make an insurance claim. The insurance company has already heard about the incident as it is already, and we are going to handle this together to the best of our abilities. She’s handling the majority of communications with both the landlord and the insurance company, and even had to endure the landlord yelling at her on the phone when she called them to talk about the insurance issue. I would like to kindly ask all commenters to refrain from criticising my roommate as we are still on good terms and I truly appreciate all that she’s done, especially when she was pulled into this suddenly and it wasn’t her fault.
Also, this post is getting a lot more attention than I expected, which is kind of scary actually, but it’s getting hard to reply to everyone. Updates for now would be that the landlord has now filed a claim to their insurance, and I will be seeking advice from a legal clinic nearby. We still haven’t heard back from our insurance company, and yesterday we had a meeting with the management office who told us that they would be billing us, the tenants, directly instead of billing the landlord for the repair costs of the downstairs unit. We are still in the early stages of this process I think, so there’s still a lot of uncertainty, but hopefully we can work this out. Thank you again to those who leave a comment and we’ll see what happens next.