Should my condo insurance cover more than just my stuff like appliances, cabinetry, countertops, flooring?

Your condo association purchases insurance on the building and premises. Broadly speaking there are two approaches condo bylaws take to insure the property.

One approach is the condo association agrees to cover only the exterior and common areas. You are responsible to insure the interior this can include walls, wall coverings, flooring, furnace, appliances, lighting, plumbing fixtures, kitchen and bath cabinets (basically everything inside your condo). In this scenario you are responsible not only for your personal property but also the entire interior of your condo. As an insurance agent I did not like this approach because it is very difficult to determine how much insurance you should have to be able to repair or replace everything in within the walls of your condo.

The other approach, which I always preferred, was more comprehensive where the association agrees to cover the entire unit as it was originally built. In this scenario you only insure your upgrades (i.e. bookcases, upgrades, finished basements. etc.) and your personal property.

You need to carefully review your condo bylaws or have a good insurance agent go over the bylaws with you. If you don't insure the property that you are responsible for you could find yourself woefully under insured and perhaps unable to rebuild your condo.

In addition to insuring the part of the building you are responsible for you need to determine the replacement cost of your personal property within the condo.

Sorry for the long answer but it is a surprisingly complex question.

it should cover water damage and fire damage also, including walls, ceilings, etc. Personal property such as clothing and furniture would be covered by a separate policy.

If you OWN the condo, your insurance should cover the full cost of everything you own. It should cover you such that if you wanted to sell the condo, you would get back what you paid plus equity.

When you own a condo, you own the appliances, cabinetry, countertops, and flooring; so your policy should cover all those things. Technically, a condo policy covers everything from the studs in. In other words, the building structure is covered by the building's policy, but everything within your unit should be covered by your policy (and it will all be on one policy, including your clothes and furniture).

I used to live in a condo, and a pipe burst in my unit during the night. It did a lot of damage to my unit, but it almost destroyed the unit downstairs. It ended up being covered by the building's policy because it was determined that the building's water pressure was too high (a regulator failed), but my policy would have covered everything in my unit if the building's hadn't. The owner downstairs really lucked out, however, because she owned her unit outright and she had NO insurance at all.

YOUR condo owners policy will cover YOUR liability, parts of the condo building you're required to insure, and your stuff.

The ASSOCIATION policy doesn't protect YOU at ALL. It protects the association.

You need to read your bylaws, to see what parts YOU are responsible for, and what parts your ASSOCIATION is responsible for. ANd keep in mind, the association policy probably as a large deductible - like maybe $50,000 per claim - which could leave you uninsured, even if it IS the association's responsibility.