You’re in a tough situation as you’ve been conflicting legal advice.
My impression though is not, per your title, that a broker/real estate is needed to be a co-host.manager but that if you are sued as a co-host/manager that you will be held to a higher standard of care as a real estate professional rather than a co-Host who is not a real estate professional.
That sounds realistic to me.
It might well be that your lawyer cannot readily point to cases where a real estate professional was held to a higher standard of care because the cases have settled but just think about it. Imagine a guest is seriously injured on the property, a lawsuit is filed, is the co-Host going to be sued? Absolutely.
Is the lawyer going to make the argument that whatever was not addressed and arguably contributed to the injury was the duty of the co-Host? Of course. Will the opposing counsel be able to prevent the co-Host from testifying as to its credentials as a real estate professional? I would not think so.
I don’t know why you are ‘freaked out.’ You had to know you had potential liability in this arrangement. Isn’t it the situation that the co-Host could lose her real estate license only for a truly egregious act or omission? You might want to read count III of this lawsuit that is being waged against the property manager (Airbnb and the property owner too) for a sense of what will be thrown at you in the event of a serious injury.
Here, even Airbnb is sued though by conventional thinking it is not legally responsible. The point is that if the stakes are high enough the lawyers will sue everyone under every theory they can imagine. Then they’ll find out what sticks with that court with those facts and the law as it is just then.
For now I would accept the opinion of your lawyer. Do you still want to be in the real estate management/co-Host business? IS there a contract between the property owner and the co-Host that spells out each’s responsibilities and limits to liability? There should be. Is there anything in the contract that spells out that the owner is not hiring the co-Host in their capacity as a real estate professional? It sounds like you’d want that but I don’t know if that’d ‘stick’ when a third party (the injured guest) claims that.
If the Host is not maintaining the property to code or otherwise is not willing to maintain the property appropriately then you should resign. Otherwise, you are on the hook and in my opinion should be. The fact is that the co-Host is a real estate professional not a clerk and I don’t know that you’ll be able to ‘contract’ that out as to the third party claim. Your contract with the owner could limit damages, say to the annual contract amount, and include a provision that the owner indemnifies the co-Host. But those protections won’t help much in a third party suit by an injured guest that goes after your broker and LLC.
You might want to look here on a checklist for maintaining a safe property.