Hello from Montana! I am just starting out and find that I need special home insurance or may be can’t at all because I want to rent a bedroom and bath in the basement and although there is an egress window, there is not a separate entrance. People would have to go upstairs to exit from any one of three doorways. Thank you!
You need to find an independent agency, not a national chain.
Ah yes. Montana. The land of unpermitted construction. I was appalled by what I saw there when I was searching for a home to buy. And yes, we did buy a house that had non-permitted work.
Building Codes never allow a basement bedroom with fewer than two exits. Doesn’t matter where you are located in the USA. In case of an emergency, people must be able to get out.
If I rented a room that didn’t have those two exits, I would immediately leave and call AirBNB. However, there is a new listing near us that has only the interior staircase– no egress window and they are getting great reviews. If our city learned of this, they would fine these people huge sums of money. Too many students have died in illegal bedrooms over the past twenty years.
Where in Montana? It is a big state.
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We use Proper Insurance and are happy. They specialize in home sharing insurance. They are based in Bozeman, but have agents who cover each region. I found them to be very helpful about a whole slew of AirBnB issues. Haven’t had to make any claims yet. When i do i will update my review of them.
ah! yes the one thing we all love INSURANCE .
always available to collect , but the never there when u show up .
i had the same experience until i found proper.insure
888-631-6680
Sigh- more flogging of product
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“Lucy” has posted this repeatedly on various threads today, some quite old. It’s certainly put me off having anything to do with Guardhog!
I think I have made it pretty clear of what I think!!!
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I went through this a couple of months back–we have three private rooms in our house we list and Proper won’t touch us because it isn’t a whole house rental and we live there. Finally went through Allstate, who has a rider specifically for those who are doing short term rentals in part of their home. We changed insurance companies to them so we could get it. Costs a little more than plain homeowner’s insurance without the rider, of course, but fairly reasonable.
Unfortunately, I have absolutely no faith in any homeowner’s insurance, having been completely jacked over by our previous insurance company a year and a half ago (before we were even considering doing Airbnb). Despise the lot of 'em.
Yes, I believe that’s the name of the rider. Unfortunately, most of the regular insurance companies in the U.S. will flat out cancel you or invalidate any claims if they find out you are doing short term rentals (at least the dozen or so ones I talked to). There are several companies that handle whole-house STRs, but Allstate is honestly the only one I could find that would handle room rentals in an owner occupied home.
I have no expectation that any of these insurance companies will pay anything in the event of an incident, honestly. My previous insurance company ran me through the ringer for 18 months and treated me like a mastermind criminal when my basement flooded, then refused to renew citing too many claims (I’ve only ever had the one). They also ended up paying less than 1/4 of what I had to spend to fix the mess (and I only got that because I hired a public adjuster, so most of what ended up being paid by the insurance company went to the public adjuster). I’ve no faith left in the insurance industry now, so as long as I technically have the required legal coverage, I put no thought into what they will pay out. As far as I’m concerned, I won’t get jack.
Gah, what a cynic I’ve let them make me!