Your policy probably excludes the exact thing earning the money.Founded by a former Airbnb host.
Most hosts are insured on a homeowners or dwelling fire policy that was written for a family or a year-long tenant, and it says so in the exclusions. We write the policy that names nightly guests as the business it is, and we read the one you have first, free, before you change anything.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
We ran almost fifty short-term rentals before we insured anybody else’s.
Kevin Kelsey
Founder | Principal Agent
Boring’s founder, Kevin Kelsey, owned four short-term rentals and managed almost fifty for other owners at the peak before he worked in insurance, and he founded Airhost Academy, one of the first blogs written for Airbnb hosts, which he later sold. He has handled the turnovers, the pool questions, the guest who breaks the one thing the platform will not pay for, and the letter from an insurer explaining that a homeowners or dwelling fire policy was never written for nightly guests. So the person building your coverage has hosted, rather than working from a rate manual.
We hold an appointment with Proper Insurance, the short-term rental program underwritten by Lloyd’s of London and Concert Insurance Group and written on a commercial form that replaces the homeowners policy rather than sitting on top of it, and we still place occasional letting on a second-home policy with the right endorsement when that is the cheaper honest answer.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What short-term rental businesses actually need.
The building, written for hosting
Fire, wind, water and the rest of the special-form perils, at the cost to rebuild, on a policy that knows strangers sleep there for money.
Without it — A homeowners policy assumes you live there. A dwelling fire form assumes a tenant with a lease. Neither assumed a new guest every three nights, and the adjuster reads the exclusions before the loss.
Guest injury
A guest hurt on the stairs, in the pool, in the hot tub or on the balcony, and the lawyer who writes to you afterward. One million per occurrence is the floor, two is available.
Without it — Homeowners liability contemplates a visitor. A paying guest is a customer, and the standard form excludes claims arising from a business.
Furniture, linens and everything you supply
Replacement cost on the contents you furnished the place with, which is more than you think and all of it at once after a fire.
Without it — A furnished rental is an inventory of your property in a stranger’s hands, and a dwelling fire form covers contents thinly if at all.
Damage and theft by a guest
The broken television, the stained carpet, the missing speaker, without a sub-limit and without asking the guest to pay first.
Without it — Airbnb’s Host Damage Protection is not insurance by Airbnb’s own description; you ask the guest first, on a clock, and only for stays booked through Airbnb.
Lost bookings
The income you would have earned while the property cannot be let after a covered loss, for as long as the repair takes.
Without it — A summer of cancelled bookings is the loss. The repair bill is the small part.
The amenities
Pool, hot tub, bikes, kayaks, the golf cart and the fire pit, covered as part of the stay rather than excluded as hazards.
Without it — The attractive things in the listing are the first four questions an underwriter asks, and a standard form treats several of them as reasons to decline.
Bed bugs, squatters and the things only hosts get
Treatment and lost income after an infestation, the legal cost of removing a guest who will not leave, a claim over a camera or a bottle of wine you left out.
Without it — None of it is in a homeowners policy, and the platform covers none of it either.
Your own stays
If the property is also your home, or your family uses it between guests, your personal liability and your own loss of use sit on the same policy.
Without it — Two policies on one house argue at claim time about which one was in force that week.
The claims we actually see.
Ordered by how often we see them, not by how dramatic they are. Each one names the coverage that answers it — and the policy people wrongly assume already does.
Most common
A guest slipped on the pool deck and broke a wrist, and their lawyer wrote to me.
Covered by General liability, written for paying guests
Hosts assume the platform’s liability protection answers this. Both platforms describe theirs as an addition to your own insurance rather than a replacement, both apply only to stays booked through the platform, and Vrbo charges a 25% deductible to a host who has no policy of their own.
Common
A guest’s party wrecked the place: carpets, a door, a television, and the neighbors called the city.
Covered by Property and contents, guest damage without a sub-limit
Airbnb’s Host Damage Protection is up to $3 million and is not insurance by Airbnb’s own description. You must ask the guest to pay first, within 14 days of their checkout, and it applies only to Airbnb stays.
Less common, severe
A kitchen fire in March. The house was closed until July, and every summer booking cancelled.
Covered by Business income, actual loss sustained
A homeowners policy pays your additional living expense if you are displaced. It pays nothing for the bookings you lost, because a homeowners policy does not know you had any.
Common
My insurer denied the claim because the house was "used for business", and I had never mentioned the listing.
Covered by A policy that names short-term letting as the use
Most hosts believe telling the insurer is optional. The business exclusion in a homeowners form does not care whether you mentioned it, and an undisclosed use is grounds to void the policy from the start.
Less common, severe
A guest sued me in small claims court over the review I wrote about her stay.
Covered by General liability with personal and advertising injury
The premises liability on a dwelling policy or a DIC wrap answers only for bodily injury or property damage caused by an accident. A claim about words is neither. Our founder learned this with his own rental, when his DP-3 carrier and Airbnb both had nothing to offer against a $10,000 defamation claim.
The same problem, four ways in.
A host with one listing, an owner with a beach house, an operator leasing units to sublet and a landlord reading a DP-3 for the first time all arrive at the same gap from different directions. Pick the door that is yours.
- Airbnb Hosts
Airbnb gives every host up to $3 million of damage protection that it says is not insurance, and $1 million of liability coverage on a program it arranges with its insurers. Both apply only to stays booked through Airbnb, Airbnb itself calls them no substitute for your own insurance, and neither covers the house, your income or your own stays. A host policy does, and we write it for hosts on Airbnb, Vrbo and direct bookings alike.
- Vacation Rentals
A vacation property you rent out is empty for long stretches and full in the season the weather is worst, and it sits on the coast, in the mountains or in wildfire country because that is why people book it. We insure it for all three facts at once, and we read the second-home policy it is probably on today before you change anything.
- Rental Arbitrage & Co-Hosts
An operator who leases apartments and lets them nightly, or who manages other people’s listings for a fee, is running a hospitality business out of property somebody else insured for something else. We insure the operator, name the landlord where the lease requires it, and put the certificate in their hands before the first guest.
- Dwelling Fire (DP-1/DP-2/DP-3)
The dwelling fire form — DP-1, DP-2 or DP-3 — is what a house gets when the owner does not live in it. The three are not tiers of the same thing, and DP-3 does not do what many owners think it does.
What our short-term rental clients ask us.
My dwelling policy includes premises liability. Isn’t that general liability?
It is one slice of it, and the slice is injury or property damage caused by an accident at the property. What it leaves out is everything a host does with words, which means the listing, the house rules and the reviews. Our founder was sued in California small claims court in 2018 by a guest who said his Airbnb review had defamed her. He held a DP-3 with premises liability, and the carrier had no coverage for a claim with no injury and no damage in it. A commercial general liability policy carries personal and advertising injury, which names libel and slander. If your liability section does not use those words, you have premises liability, and the difference is yours to carry.
Does homeowners insurance cover Airbnb?
Usually not, and the exclusion is in the standard form rather than in the fine print of one bad carrier. The homeowners form excludes liability arising out of a business, defines a business as any activity paid more than $2,000 in the prior twelve months, and carves out one exception: renting your home "on an occasional basis if used only as a residence". A listing that runs all year is not occasional. Some carriers will endorse limited letting for a price; most will not cover a full-time listing, and several will non-renew you for having one. The guide walks through the wording.
Isn’t AirCover enough?
AirCover for Hosts is two things. Host Damage Protection, up to $3 million, is a guarantee from Airbnb rather than an insurance policy, and it requires you to ask the guest first and to claim on a short clock. Host Liability Insurance, $1 million, is a program Airbnb arranges with its insurers; it responds only to stays booked through Airbnb, and Airbnb’s own help pages say it is not a substitute for your own insurance. Neither covers your own stays, a direct booking, the weeks between guests, lost income, or the building itself. It is a useful backstop on top of a real policy. It is not one.
How much does short-term rental insurance cost?
It depends on the rebuild cost of the house, the state and the amenities, so we do not print a number that would be wrong for you. The pattern is that a proper short-term rental policy costs more than the homeowners policy it replaces, because it is insuring a business, and less than the homeowners policy plus the claim that policy would have denied. A pool, a hot tub or a coastal address moves the price more than the number of nights does.
I only rent a few weekends a year. Does that matter?
It changes the price, not the principle. Occasional letting can often be endorsed onto a homeowners or second-home policy rather than needing a commercial form, and that is cheaper. It still has to be disclosed, because the business exclusion does not care about frequency. An owner letting six weekends a year on an undisclosed policy has the same coverage problem as one letting fifty, for a fraction of the saving.
Do I have to cancel my homeowners policy?
If you move to a commercial short-term rental policy, yes, because the new policy replaces it rather than sitting on top of it, and two policies on one house are a dispute waiting for a claim. If the property is also your primary home, the replacement policy carries your personal liability and your own loss of use, so nothing is left uncovered by the switch. We time the cancellation to the new effective date so there is no gap and no overlap.
What do underwriters actually ask about?
The attractive nuisances and the turnover. Pools and hot tubs, and whether they are fenced, covered and alarmed. Trampolines, balconies and railings, wood stoves and fire pits, and whether entry is a lockbox or a keypad. Then the operating pattern: nightly or weekly minimum, maximum occupancy, whether events are permitted, whether a cleaner attends between stays, and how many properties you run. A three-night minimum with no events is a materially better risk than a one-night let with a large occupancy cap, and it prices that way.
I run several units, some of them not mine. What then?
Then you are operating a business rather than owning a rental, and the policy should say so. Leasing units to sublet nightly is rental arbitrage, and it is insurable, with the landlord named as an additional insured and a certificate in their hands before the first guest. Managing other people’s listings is co-hosting, and the cleanest structure is coverage under each owner’s policy with your management income protected. Tell us the structure honestly; it is a normal risk and an awkward one to fix after a claim.
Guides on short-term rental.
- Does Homeowners Insurance Cover Airbnb?Homeowners forms exclude business, define business at $2,000 a year, and exempt only occasional residential rental. The form wording, what a landlord policy adds and removes, and what to do instead.
- Is AirCover Insurance?What Airbnb’s Host Damage Protection and Host Liability Insurance actually say, what Vrbo’s $1 million actually covers, and the list of things neither one touches.
- How Much Is Airbnb Insurance?No published prices exist for short-term rental insurance, so here is what actually sets one: the house first, the amenities second, the operation third, and the nights last.
- Insurance for Airbnb Co-Hosts and ManagersCo-hosts ride on the owner’s policy and insure their income separately; arbitrage operators are the host and carry the policy. What each needs, and why a renters policy is not it.
- Premises Liability vs General LiabilityPremises liability answers for injuries at the property. General liability also answers for what you say and publish. A host who was sued over an Airbnb review explains the difference.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.
Handed a lease, a vendor packet or a client contract with insurance requirements? Paste it into the COI Requirements Decoder to see what each one means for your business, or read what the requirements mean.