What is the difference between an HO-6 policy and the HOA master policy?

These are two different policies bought by two different parties, and the entire relationship between them comes down to a single dividing line inside the unit. The master policy is purchased by the association and insures the buildings, the common elements, and the association itself. The HO-6 is purchased by the individual unit owner and insures the owner for everything the master policy does not reach.

Think of the unit boundary as a seam. The master policy covers the structure up to some point at or inside that boundary; the HO-6 covers inward from wherever the master policy stops. The two are meant to meet at the seam with no gap and no overlap. In practice they drift out of alignment, and the gap or the double coverage only becomes visible after a loss, when an adjuster pays each policy according to its own terms.

The master policy carries the coverages only the association can buy: property coverage on the buildings and common elements, commercial general liability for injuries in the common areas, directors and officers liability for the board's governance decisions, and a fidelity or crime bond over association funds. On the property side it is meant to be written at full replacement cost. Florida Statute 718.111(11), for example, frames the association's obligation as insuring the property as originally installed or replacement of like kind and quality, validated by an independent appraisal on a regular cycle.

What the master policy deliberately does not cover is the unit owner's personal property, loss of use, personal liability, and, depending on the valuation basis, part or all of the unit interior. Those are exactly the exposures the HO-6 exists to pick up. A board cannot buy an HO-6 for its owners, but the size of the gap each owner has to insure is created entirely by the board's own master policy.

The HO-6 is the mirror image of the master policy's reach into the unit. Wherever the master policy stops, the HO-6 is supposed to start. It carries the owner's walls-in or interior structure coverage, the owner's betterments and improvements, personal property, additional living expense if the unit is uninhabitable after a covered loss, personal liability, and loss assessment coverage.

Two of those are the ones owners most often get wrong. Betterments are owner upgrades made after the original construction: a renovated kitchen, upgraded flooring, a redone bath. A master policy written on a single-entity basis insures the original installations but excludes those later upgrades, so the renovation an owner paid for is an HO-6 exposure, not an association one. Loss assessment is the endorsement that pays the owner's share of a special assessment the association levies after a covered common-element loss, including a passed-through master-policy deductible.

The one thing that determines how much walls-in coverage an HO-6 needs is the master policy's valuation basis, and that basis is set by the recorded declaration, not chosen by the owner. There are three bases. Bare-walls stops at the unfinished interior surfaces of the perimeter walls, floors, and ceilings, leaving everything inward, the drywall, cabinetry, flooring, fixtures, and appliances, to the owner. Single-entity covers those interior installations as originally built by the developer, but not later owner upgrades. All-in, also called all-inclusive, covers the original installations plus fixtures and improvements.

This is why reading the two policies in isolation tells an owner almost nothing. On a bare-walls master policy the HO-6 has to do the most work, carrying full interior structure coverage. On an all-in master policy the walls-in exposure shrinks to mostly betterments and personal property. An owner who sizes an HO-6 without first knowing the declaration's valuation basis is guessing at the single number that matters most, and an owner whose HO-6 was written to match a bare-walls basis that the declaration later amended to all-in is paying twice for the same interior.

The sharpest point of contact between the master policy and the HO-6 is the master deductible. When a covered loss hits the common elements, the association pays its deductible before the master policy responds, and the governing documents usually let the board recover that deductible from owners as a special assessment. The HO-6's loss assessment coverage is what pays the owner's share of that pass-through.

There is a trap here that catches owners who assume a large loss assessment limit protects them. Under the standard unit-owner loss assessment endorsement, the portion of any assessment attributable to the master policy's deductible is capped at a separate $1,000 sublimit, regardless of how high the overall loss assessment limit is. So an owner can carry a $50,000 to $100,000 loss assessment limit and still recover only $1,000 toward a deductible pass-through unless the carrier is asked to raise that specific sublimit. On a master policy with a percentage wind or hurricane deductible worth a large sum, that difference lands on owners and, where it is uncollectible, circles back to the association budget.

The board owns one side of this and the owners own the other, and they only line up if the board makes its own policy legible. The single most useful thing a board can publish is three plain facts: the master policy's valuation basis in ordinary language, the master deductible in dollars, and a reminder that a bigger overall loss assessment limit does not by itself buy deductible pass-through protection.

For an owner, the sequence is to read the declaration's valuation basis first, then size the HO-6 to fill exactly that gap: full interior structure coverage where the master policy is bare-walls, betterments coverage wherever the basis excludes upgrades, and a loss assessment limit with a raised deductible-assessment sublimit sized to the per-unit share of the master deductible. The difference between these two policies is not a detail; it is the entire question of who pays after a loss, and it is answered by the declaration long before any claim is filed.