Bare walls covers what the builder poured. All-in covers what's inside it too.

Condo master policies are not one-size-fits-all. State condominium statutes and individual declarations each specify a valuation basis, the line dividing what the association's policy insures from what belongs on the unit owner's own HO-6 policy. Bare-walls coverage sits at one end: it insures only the structure as it was originally built, leaving flooring, cabinetry, fixtures, and any owner-installed improvements for the unit owner to insure separately. All-in coverage sits at the other end, extending the master policy to cover most or all of the finished interior and betterments, which narrows the unit owner's exposure but raises the association's total insured value and premium.

Which one applies is a declaration question, not a preference question. Some state statutes set a default valuation basis when the declaration is silent; others leave it entirely to the governing documents. Before assuming your policy matches your declaration, read the actual recorded valuation-basis language, not just the current renewal's declarations page.

The dividing line is a physical surface, not a dollar figure

The boundary between bare-walls and all-in is not a coverage limit, it is a plane inside the building. Bare-walls stops at the unfinished interior surfaces of the perimeter walls, floors, and ceilings: the master policy insures the structure to the back side of the drywall and no further. Everything on the room side of that surface, finished drywall, paint, flooring, cabinets, countertops, built-in appliances, and fixtures, sits on the unit owner. All-in runs the master policy inward past that plane to pick up the finished interior as it was originally installed under the plans and specifications. Between the two sits single-entity coverage, which insures fixtures and installations as originally built but stops short of the upgrades a later owner adds.

That middle tier is where the betterments question actually lives. Under bare-walls, every finish is an owner responsibility from day one. Under single-entity or all-in, the master policy generally covers interiors only to the original developer specification, so an owner who tears out builder-grade laminate and installs stone, or who finishes a basement the plans left unfinished, has created a betterment the master policy was never priced to insure. Those improvements almost always fall to the owner's own HO-6 policy regardless of which master-policy basis the association carries. Read your declaration for the phrase 'as originally installed' or 'in accordance with the original plans and specifications', because that language, not the word all-in, is what decides who pays for the upgraded kitchen.

Why lenders lean toward all-in and replacement cost

Lenders selling condo loans to Fannie Mae are underwriting the collateral, and a bare-walls master policy leaves a chunk of that collateral, the finished interior, insured by a patchwork of individual owner policies the lender cannot verify. That is why the warrantability requirements push toward the fuller bases. The Fannie Mae Selling Guide, section B7-3, requires the master property policy to be written on a replacement cost basis at no less than 100 percent of the current replacement cost of the project improvements, and it treats actual cash value as a defect. Replacement cost and valuation basis are separate settings on the same policy, but single-entity and all-in are the forms that most cleanly satisfy the declaration language modern condo lenders expect to see.

The lender liability floor rides alongside it. The Selling Guide requires commercial general liability with a limit of at least $1,000,000 per occurrence, and on the specialty community-association forms that defense costs are paid outside the limit, so a covered claim does not erode the $1,000,000 the declaration promises. None of this is a reason to switch a compliant bare-walls community to all-in on its own, a bare-walls declaration is valid where the governing documents specify it, but if the association is chasing warrantability for its owners' financing, the valuation basis and the replacement cost setting are both on the checklist.

How the HO-6 fills a bare-walls gap

When the master policy is bare-walls, the unit owner's HO-6 is not optional decoration, it is the policy that insures the entire finished interior. The dwelling limit on that HO-6, its Coverage A, has to be sized to rebuild flooring, drywall finish, cabinetry, and fixtures, plus any betterments the owner added, because none of that lands on the association after a fire or a burst supply line. Owners who carry a token HO-6 dwelling limit on a bare-walls building are self-insuring a repair bill that commonly runs in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single-room water loss and well into six figures for a serious fire.

The second gap the HO-6 closes is the deductible pass-through, and this is where a default hides. When the association's per-occurrence deductible is charged back to owners as a special assessment, loss assessment coverage on the HO-6 pays the owner's share. The catch is that the standard ISO homeowners form caps the portion of a loss assessment attributable to the master-policy deductible at just $1,000, far below a modern master deductible that can run from the tens of thousands into six figures on a percentage wind structure. An owner has to buy that sublimit up by endorsement for the coverage to matter. Loss assessment limits otherwise commonly run in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, but the deductible-assessment sublimit inside them is the number that quietly leaves an owner exposed. The most useful thing a board can do, on any basis, is publish the master-policy deductible in dollars so owners can size both their dwelling limit and their loss assessment endorsement to the gap the declaration actually leaves them.