Insurance Recommendations

Insurance is one of the most important — and most misunderstood — parts of running a rental. Here’s how we think about it, what we generally recommend, and how TIDY can help you prepare and file claims.

What we recommend

We do recommend carrying insurance. In particular, we recommend a homeowner’s policy that explicitly covers short-term rental use. The most important thing this protects you against is large, catastrophic losses — things like a fire, major water damage, or a liability event that could otherwise be financially devastating.

A nice benefit of insuring at the property level is that you go through underwriting one time and get the exact coverage you need, rather than relying on each individual pro or vendor to carry their own coverage. It’s typically inexpensive for owners to get this kind of protection, and expensive for vendors — so owner-level coverage is usually the better value.

Insurance we generally don’t recommend

There’s a separate category of insurance designed to cover small, in-stay damage — the "a guest broke a lamp, so the policy replaces the lamp" type of coverage. The product is real (we’ve met the companies that offer it), but in general we don’t recommend it.

The main problem is fraud. This category tends to be full of it, which makes it expensive. Even if you’re a good actor who only files a claim when a guest genuinely breaks something, you’re sharing a risk pool with people who file claims for damage they caused themselves — "the owner broke it." That drives rates up for everyone, so the coverage usually costs more than it’s worth relative to what it pays out.

Instead, budget for breakage

Things will break — it’s a normal cost of operating a rental. Rather than insuring small items, we recommend keeping a budget set aside for routine replacement (lamps, dishes, linens, and other minor wear and tear). It’s worth treating this as an expected line item rather than something you try to insure away.

You also have options to recover money when a guest causes damage:

• You can file a damage claim with Airbnb (or your booking platform) for guest-caused damage.
• TIDY can help you document and file these disputes, and pursue coverage that way, to help recover some of that money.

For damage caused by a pro rather than a guest, see Damage Claims for the dispute process.

Which providers we work with

We can work with any insurance provider you choose — we’re not tied to any one company. Where we add value is in the paperwork and follow-through:

• We can prepare the documentation you need to submit to your insurer.
• We can do some of the work of filing claims on your behalf.
• We can help you file and pursue disputes with Airbnb and other platforms.

If you’d like recommendations on where to get quotes, we’re happy to point you to providers. Note that we are not an insurance broker today, so we can’t give you quotes ourselves.

Looking ahead

We’re currently exploring what it would take to become a licensed insurance broker. It’s something we’re actively looking into, and it may let us help more directly with coverage and quotes in the future. We’ll update this page if and when that changes.