London, UK - July 31, 2018: The buttons of the travel app Airbnb, surrounded by Amazon, ebay, News and other apps on the screen of an iPhone.
Many Canadian property owners are turning to Airbnb to rent out their properties on a short-term basis for some extra cash, some may even do it as a full time business. It is important for you to know what kind of home sharing insurance you need and also what is included and not included in Airbnb’s Host Guarantee & Host Protection.
If you’re like most people, you’ve become accustomed to accepting terms and conditions on everything from your phone updates to music subscriptions to social media updates without every actually reading the long and confusing documents.
When deciding to rent part or all of your property through Airbnb, it’s easy to not look into the details of their host guarantee and protection.
Right away, you’ll see “To keep you, your home, and your belongings safe, we cover every booking with $1M USD in property damage protection and another $1M USD in insurance against accidents.” They claim to “have your back” with
Once you start digging, you soon find out that the Host Guarantee program doesn’t cover cash and securities, collectibles, rare artwork, jewelry, pets or personal liability. The program also doesn’t cover loss or damage to property due to wear and tear.
Just look at their excluded losses:
And, excluded property:
But realistically, it’s not just what is and isn’t covered under their policy that you should be thinking about. You should be more concerned about what becoming an Airbnb host will do to your existing mortgage insurance and house insurance. And the only way to really find out whether or not becoming a host is a good idea is to talk to your banker and to a trusted insurance broker.
Note: This blog post is based on information gathered from the Airbnb public website as of May 2019.