I’m not flying under the radar but nearby hosts are and will thus have a financial advantage for some time. I also live next to my town hall! I do intend to register, but I believe the licensing requirements are by municipality and thus vary.
I’m just looking for the best way to meet the insurance requirements as cost effectively as possible. Right now I’ve turned to looking at a higher deductible. I wouldn’t be surprised if AIrbnb ended up in the insurance business or at least partnering with a company eventually.
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With those insurance costs, I don’t see how you can afford to do Airbnb unless you’re renting high dollar rates or a lot of listings at the same insured property. These requirements would essentially eliminate a private room rental at an owner occupied residence. You’d either have to go all in or all out to make it worth it. Otherwise most of the money your guests pay is going to everyone BUT you and YOU are the one providing what the guest wants. Airbnb takes their 18%, Maryland takes %7 plus the license cost. The insurance company takes apparently $400-2500 per year and whats left over is yours if there is anything left over.
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Fortunately we do rent out two rooms and sometimes three. Once we find the lowest possible cost, I will divide it across our usual annual bookings, then probably increase half that per night and let the other half eat into our profit. If we passed the whole increase along it would just kill our number of bookings.
Well your property taxes, state incomes taxes, gas tax etc are going to drop an equal amount right? This isn’t just a money grab so of course they’ll pass that savings back to you somewhere else. 
/Sarcasm
@Christine_Shirtcliff have you looked into insurance from CBIZ com? They have policies specific to vacation rentals and while they wouldn’t work for me, might for you? I saw them via another host group.
Thanks! I’ll look into that.
@Christine_Shirtcliff BTW, i looked up my liability ins cost for 2017 & 2018 and for my SIX cottages, it was $676 and then $851. I hadn’t paid much attention to the cost bump because it’s a once a year thing so had forgotten prior year cost. Not sure why the big jump but still less than your quote.
Thanks. I finally got the full quote from my agent and was quite alarmed to see that in addition to the premium increases the commercial policy dropped some coverages that were present in my residential policy. I’m sure a lot of this is because I have a complex property with a 200 year old home, an apartment in my house as well as the AIrbnb rooms, etc. Thanks to the long weekend I’m taking a break from the whole thing an revisiting the research Tuesday. The CBIZ Innkeeper policy, suggested by another host, looks like a possible alternative.
@Christine_Shirtcliff oh…home is that old? Might be problematic as CBIZ didn’t want me because electric system was too old and mine are from the 50’s.
Thankfully CBIZ is still talking with me and we have had a lot of updates. If nothing else they are pointing out a lot of things that I need my current agent to consider. I was particularly impressed with how quickly they responded. I believe that they will require an inspection.
