My wife used to be a leasing agent for an apartment complex. One day a tenant from her complex started the dishwasher, something broke and it flooded the entire apartment and the apartment below it. Had tenant paid the $13 or so a month for renters insurance it would have been nothing or only a few hundred out of pocket for a deductible. Instead, tenant was looking at over $20,000 in repairs.
I'm not firsthand familiar with property insurance, but there are restrictions on who can purchase insurance. You have to have fiduciary interest.
So, for example, you can't buy a life insurance policy on a random stranger. That can go bad places and be an incentive to commit murder.
So it is possible the landlord cannot buy this specific insurance themselves and the coverage they can legally purchase does not cover the instance in question.
