What Is a Master Policy?
It's the HOA's policy covering the building's shared structure and common areas. Your own policy covers the unit's interior and belongings.
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The master policy usually stops at the drywall, studs, and wiring, covering the building's frame, roof, and shared spaces like hallways or the pool. Everything inward, flooring, cabinets, built-in appliances, the walls you painted, falls to your HO-6 policy unless your HOA's bylaws say otherwise. Some associations carry a bare-walls policy, which covers even less, pushing more onto you. Check your HOA's governing documents and master policy summary for the exact split, since this isn't standard from one building to the next.
Because that split varies by HOA, two owners in the same complex can carry very different HO-6 limits and still both be wrong for their unit. One might be underinsured for the drywall-in work a bare-walls master policy leaves out. Comparing coverage now, against what the HOA documents actually assign, is how a unit owner avoids paying out of pocket after a loss.
What happens when a neighbor's unit floods yours
When water comes through the ceiling from the unit above, the master policy usually doesn't respond at all, because a burst pipe inside a private unit isn't damage to the building's shared structure. The question becomes whose policy pays for what got wet. Your HO-6 covers the damage to your own flooring, cabinets, and belongings regardless of fault, and your loss of use coverage pays if you can't live there while it dries out. If the upstairs owner was negligent, maybe they ignored a slow leak for weeks, their liability coverage may owe your insurer back once a claim is paid out. That process runs between the insurers, not between neighbors arguing in the hallway.
Loss assessment coverage is the piece that catches people off guard. If a pipe bursts in a shared wall and damages several units, or the building's master policy has a large deductible the HOA can't cover from reserves, the HOA can levy a special assessment against every owner to cover the shortfall. Most HO-6 policies include a small amount of loss assessment coverage by default, often a few thousand dollars, but a real loss, like storm damage to a roof or a major common-area pipe failure, can produce an assessment well above that. Raising this limit costs little and is worth checking against what the HOA's reserve study and insurance summary suggest the building could face.
Townhomes complicate this further because ownership structure varies by building. Some townhome associations insure the exterior walls and roof the same way a condo master policy does, treating the townhome like an attached unit. Others, especially where each owner holds title to the land under their unit, leave the entire structure, roof included, to the owner's own policy, which then looks more like a standard homeowners policy than an HO-6. Nothing about the word "townhome" tells you which arrangement applies. The HOA's governing documents and insurance declarations are the only reliable source for whether the association's policy touches your walls and roof at all.
Walls-in coverage, the phrase used for what an HO-6 insures, also needs to match what was actually done to the unit. A kitchen remodel with upgraded cabinets and flooring increases what it would cost to rebuild that interior, and the HO-6's dwelling limit needs to reflect that work, not the builder-grade finishes the unit had when it was new. Insurers sometimes call this betterments and improvements coverage, and it's worth confirming the limit was updated after any renovation rather than left at whatever a previous owner or the policy's starting default assumed.
How much HO-6 coverage does a unit actually need
There's no fixed number, because it depends on what the master policy leaves out and what's inside the unit. Start with the interior. Flooring, cabinets, built-in appliances, fixtures, and any upgrades made since the unit was built all need to be covered. If the HOA carries a bare-walls policy, add in the drywall, wiring, and plumbing fixtures too, since that coverage falls to the owner instead of the association. A unit's square footage times a rough per-square-foot rebuild cost gives a starting estimate, but the real number comes from pricing out what it would take to replace everything inward of whatever line the master policy draws.
Personal property is a separate number from dwelling coverage, and it's easy to underestimate. Furniture, electronics, clothing, and everything else owned adds up faster than people expect, and the default limit on a new HO-6 policy is often a flat figure that has nothing to do with what's actually inside a specific unit. A room-by-room estimate, even a rough one, usually lands higher than the starting default. Renters insurance guidance to inventory belongings applies just as much here, since the unit owner is covering the same contents a renter would.
Liability coverage matters more in attached housing than it might in a detached house, since damage or injury can spread to a neighbor's space or the common areas. If a fire starts in one unit and spreads, or a guest is hurt in a shared hallway the HOA didn't fully insure for, liability coverage on the HO-6 is what responds. Most policies default to a baseline liability limit, and raising it costs relatively little compared to the exposure in a building with shared walls and shared spaces.
Loss of use coverage, sometimes called additional living expenses, needs to match how long a real rebuild would take. A kitchen fire or major water damage in a condo can take months to repair, especially if the HOA's contractor is also handling common-area damage from the same event. A policy with a thin loss of use limit can run out before the unit is livable again. That leaves the owner covering a few months of temporary housing out of pocket, at the point they can least afford it.
Before the next renewal
Pull the HOA's master policy summary and your HO-6 declarations page side by side. Check where the master policy's coverage stops, what your loss assessment limit is, and whether your dwelling limit still matches any renovations since you moved in.
