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Is there anyone in the United States that is renting a private room in their home that has insurance to cover the gap in the event a guest burns your house down? Airbnb’s liability does not cover this, and homeowner’s insurance does not cover this.
From what I can tell so far, such a product does not exist. Am I wrong?
Try CBIZ or Proper. They include damage protection. I went with Proper since CBIZ excludes alcohol consumption as a valid cause of damage.
You should also look at the offering from peers.org:
http://www.peers.org/product/homesharing-liability-insurance/
Excerpt below:
For $36 per month, Homesharing Liability Insurance will protect you against:
• Personal injury lawsuits from a guest
• Property damage lawsuits from a guest
• Lost income as a result of major damage to your home, by your guest
As you note, Airbnb might reimburse you for theft but would not cover someone tripping and falling down your stairs (and suing). The peers plan add additional liability coverage. We got it on top of our regular home insurance.
Pretty sure Peers won’t cover the replacement of a home in the event the house burns down due to a guest.
Comet is another one I looked into that does liability only. IMO anyone renting an entire home would be crazy to not have house damage insurance. For US people, CBIZ and Proper seem to be the only ones that cover that.
Do you have Proper as a form of secondary coverage (over and above more conventional home insurance) or is it the primary insurance for your rental? Thanks in advance.
Completely replaced my current standard-fare primary homeowner’s insurance. Not cheap 
. But necessary.
Very helpful. Just got a web-based quote and, yes, not cheap (maybe 2-3X our regular home insurance) but definitely better than being with limited or no coverage for some sort of short-term rental crisis. We’ll likely switch to this shortly. Again, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
UPDATE: It turns out Proper has good offerings for whole house rentals or separate unit rentals but not yet for Airbnb arrangements in which there are shared spaces like kitchens and living rooms (which is our set up). Proper is working on a policy for this but, for now, the only option is CBIZ with an insurance policy designed for Inns & Bed and Breakfasts.
I think they do cover the trip and fall stuff under their million dollar policy?
Yes, it looks like they might’ve shifted this coverage from secondary to primary. In 2014, the NYTimes wrote:
And now comes Airbnb with its free $1 million liability coverage that will cover the hosts for its tens of thousands of United States listings. How can it afford to provide this for nothing, to everybody? Well, it is “secondary” coverage, which means that it, too, wants hosts to push any claims for guests’ injuries and deaths through hosts’ own insurance companies first.
Now the policy appears to be primary for Airbnb bookings:
The Host Protection Insurance program is insurance, and is designed to cover hosts in the event of third-party claims of bodily injury or property damage. The Host Protection Insurance program is available to hosts regardless their other insurance arrangements, but will only act as primary insurance coverage for incidents related to an Airbnb stay.
The devil is always in the details with these sorts of things so, without having read more closely, I’m still uncertain.
It’s become primary only recently I believe?
Yes, that is exactly what we found. Had already been to Proper before posting original message. We had also checked out insurance meant for inns and real B&B’s, all of which was prohibitively expensive to the point there would have been no point in hosting. We live on the coast of New England so the season here lasts 10 weeks max.
As it turns out, our current homeowner’s insurance company was able/willing to add a rider to our policy to cover us for damages to our property caused by guests for a mere $150 extra per year. This seems to be all the extra coverage we need, as, like @konacoconutz stated, Airbnb’s million dollar policy does cover you if a guest falls down and breaks him/herself.
My insurance agent found me a seperate policy for 280/yr with huge coverage.
I will try to find the name.
Please do! Would apreciate it!
I’ve been hesitant to talk directly to our regular insurance company about additional coverage for fear that it sets off alarms. I guess if we got dropped we could easily get a standard policy from another company. Still, I wonder if you can share a little of how you brought up the need for some kind of “bnb” coverage and, also, if there were any concerns raised by the insurance company.
I had the very same concerns you do. I was worried that even mentioning the possibility of Airbnb to our home owner’s insurance agent would cause them to A) drop us right away or B) try to use it as evidence to deny any/all claims we might make in the future. It came down to a choice of asking our agent if we could get reasonably priced coverage or not doing Airbnb.
When I spoke to our agent I simply said that we were “considering” doing Airbnb and wanted to know what our options were. When he asked what that meant, I said that for the 10 weeks of the season, we’d be hosting paying guests in our spare bedroom through the air platform. I said, “We often have friends or family staying with us in the summer, so the only difference really is now we’ll get a little cash for hosting.” Our agent called back after a couple of hours and offered the rider to extend our regular coverage in terms of damage to the home to our paying guests. I was very happy with this outcome and didn’t expect it at all.
I came across this article http://www.inc.com/drew-hendricks/how-insurance-tech-could-change-the-sharing-economy-forever.html?utm_content=37387034&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
Looks like they will be offering something soon!
To echo others, Proper Insurance is a good option. They specifically provide vacation rental speciality insurance, but I’m not sure if they have options for shared rooms as well.
Darren, their National Sales Manager, put together an article on it here: http://www.rented.com/vacation-rental-best-practices-blog/vacation-rental-insurance/
You could also check out Safely Stay, AIG Travel, and Red Sky.
I purchased a b&b insurance policy. I was very happy with these folks - and it wasn’t as expensive as I feared.
Cami Dennis
ISU –TRC Insurance
(425) 366-8244 direct phone & fax
(877) 637-1858 x103 toll free
To follow up on this, they just blogged about their coverage. It looks really good, and if their pricing is accurate, I’d personally cut my insurance costs by 50%. Unfortunately, only in Iowa right now.