Regulations

The Insurance Conversation Every Host Needs to Have

Your homeowner's insurance probably doesn't cover what you think it does. Here's the protection real short‑term rental hosts need — before you find out the hard way.

Most hosts find out their insurance isn’t enough at the worst possible moment — usually after a guest causes damage their policy won’t pay for, or after a slip‑and‑fall that their carrier flat‑out denies. This is one of those conversations no one wants to have. It’s also the conversation that protects everything you’ve built.

A guest of mine fell on a wet bathroom floor in my second year of hosting. Minor injury, no real harm done, but enough that they mentioned filing a claim. I called my homeowner’s insurance carrier with a sick feeling in my stomach and learned what every host eventually learns the hard way: my homeowner’s policy specifically excluded short‑term rentals. If that guest had decided to sue, the entire judgment would have come straight out of my pocket. I’d been hosting for 22 months thinking I was protected, when really I had no coverage at all. I bought a proper STR policy that afternoon and slept normally for the first time in weeks.

Here’s the insurance conversation every host needs to have.

Your homeowner's policy probably doesn't cover this

Regular homeowner’s insurance is built for people living in their own homes. Most policies specifically exclude business activity — and yes, renting your property short‑term counts as business activity. Some policies allow occasional rental nights; most don’t allow regular hosting at all.

The very first call you make should be to your current homeowner’s carrier. Ask them, in writing, whether your policy covers short‑term rentals. Their written answer changes everything that comes after.

Platform protection isn't real insurance

Airbnb’s AirCover and Vrbo’s host protection sound generous, but they don’t deliver what they market. Claims are handled one at a time, payouts are slow, and there are real gaps — long‑term damage, theft of certain items, third‑party injury claims.

Think of platform protection as a small safety net on top of your real insurance, never as the insurance itself.

What an actual STR policy covers

A short‑term rental policy from a carrier like Proper Insurance, Steadily, or Safely usually includes four things you actually need:

• Business liability: the big one — covers slip‑and‑falls, dog bites, anything that could turn into a lawsuit.

• Guest damage: coverage for damage guests cause to your property.

• Lost rental income: if the property becomes unrentable due to a covered event.

• Contents coverage: protection for the furniture, appliances, and everything inside.

The cost ranges widely — anywhere from $1,200 to $3,500 a year per property — depending on where you are, how much revenue the property generates, and how much coverage you carry.

Liability coverage is the one you cannot skip

If your budget is tight, prioritize liability over everything else. Damage to your property is unpleasant, but it’s usually limited to a few thousand dollars at most. A serious guest injury claim can run into hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — and follow you personally for years.

Carry at least $1 million in liability coverage. $2 million is better, and the difference in premium is small enough that it’s usually worth the upgrade. This is not the place to save $200 a year.

Take photos before every guest arrives

Documentation is everything when a claim happens. Ask your cleaner to take dated photos of every room as part of their turnover. Keep a simple maintenance notebook. Save receipts for any major furniture or appliance you buy.

When something goes wrong and you need to file a claim, the host with photos and receipts gets paid. The host trying to describe what the couch used to look like spends six months arguing.

Be honest with your insurance carrier

The fastest way to get a claim denied is to misrepresent how your property is actually used. If you tell your homeowner’s carrier you rent only occasionally, and they pull your Airbnb history and see 67 paid stays in the last year, your coverage is canceled retroactively — meaning you had no coverage all along.

Always disclose. Always be specific. A proper policy with the full truth costs more than the wrong policy with a half‑truth, but the wrong policy is the same as no policy at all.

Sit down with your broker once a year

Your property’s value changes. Your bookings change. Your area’s liability situation changes. The policy that was right two years ago might not even come close today.

Pick a date you’ll remember — maybe the anniversary of when you started hosting — and once a year, sit down with your broker and walk through your numbers, your improvements, and any concerns. It’s a 30‑minute conversation that protects everything else.

Insurance feels like the most boring expense in your business until the day it isn’t. And by that point, it’s too late to fix. The hosts who treat coverage as a real part of running the business — not an afterthought — are the ones who sleep through the moments when something goes wrong.