Only up to the builder-grade “standard unit” finish your declaration defines — anything above that is the owner’s coverage to carry.
Short answer
Only partly. The corporation's master policy under s.99 of the Condo Act covers “damage to units and common elements” up to whatever your declaration defines as the “standard unit” — typically builder-grade finishes. Anything the owner installed above that standard, including an upgraded floor, is the owner’s own policy to carry.
CAO is explicit that fixtures, furnishings, equipment and personal property “are not considered as part of a standard unit,” and that the definition itself lives in your corporation’s own governing documents, not in the Act. Ontario condo counsel describes the master policy the same way: it covers “the building structure itself” and “‘standard’ finishes within units — typically builder-grade installations,” while excluding “unit improvements and betterments — upgrades made to the unit above the standard unit definition,” naming custom hardwood floors as the example. Two corporations in the same city can define “standard” differently, so a board shouldn’t assume the builder’s original spec is the last word — check the declaration, not habit.
Say a unit was delivered with builder-grade laminate (the standard unit finish) and a previous owner later upgraded it to engineered hardwood. A burst supply line floods the unit. The master policy pays to restore the floor back to the standard-unit spec — laminate. The cost difference to actually replace it with equivalent hardwood, plus the corporation’s own deductible, falls to the owner’s “improvements and betterments” and deductible coverage. Condo deductibles for water damage have climbed sharply in recent years and can reach tens of thousands of dollars on a single claim — a gap an unendorsed HO-6 policy won’t close.
If the corporation determines the loss originated from something the owner did or failed to do, sections 92 and 105(2) of the Condo Act let the corporation charge the deductible back to that owner — but only up to “the cost of the repair or the condo corporation’s insurance deductible limit — whichever is less”. That cap matters: a board can’t recover more than the smaller of the two figures, even if the deductible is higher than what the repair actually cost. See who repairs a leaking window for the closely related question of what counts as a common-element repair versus an owner one.
The most common gap isn’t a missing policy, it’s a wrong assumption: an owner who bought a resale unit with someone else’s upgraded flooring already in place assumes the master policy “covers the condo,” full stop, and never adds betterments coverage. When a claim happens, the shortfall between the standard-unit payout and the actual replacement cost lands entirely on them. It’s worth confirming this at purchase, and again any time your corporation revises its standard-unit definition or its deductible — both change what a given policy actually pays out.
A 30-minute call is enough to map your standard-unit definition against current coverage.
