Top Questions to Ask Your Broker about Short-Term Vacation Rental Insurance
As a short-term rental host, you may believe that your Homeowners insurance is sufficient since you’ll be living there part-time. Many hosts, even veteran ones, don’t realize that renting a home on Airbnb or Vrbo beyond strictly personal use requires real changes to their insurance—whether they bought the home with short-term rental in mind or only started renting occasionally after moving in.
Before you assume your current policy has you covered, ask your broker the questions that actually reveal whether it responds to short-term rental claims—not just whether you have insurance. Proper Insurance’s Chief Marketing Officer Justin Brodin breaks down the exact questions to bring to your broker, covering guest-caused damage, lost rental income, liability, and more.
Learn the key questions to ask your broker to help ensure your vacation rental policy is truly designed for your risks.
What Your Broker Needs to Know Before Recommending a STR Policy
We know that insurance is already complicated, and it gets even harder when a home becomes more than just a home. This is where an insurance broker becomes invaluable. But they can only find you the right policy for your short-term rental if they fully understand how you’re using the property, what type of risks you and your property are exposed to, and what types of risks you’re willing to ‘self-insure’.
As Proper Insurance specializes in short-term rental coverage, we’ve put together the best-practice questions to bring to that conversation:
Here’s what to bring to that conversation:
- Guest-caused damage, theft, and vandalism
- Loss of rental income
- Assault and battery
- Invasion of privacy
- Off-premises and amenity liability
Note: Not all policies are created equal. When an insurance company excludes a coverage, it’s not because that’s standard—it’s because they don’t want to pay claims tied to that cause of loss. Make sure your policy doesn’t exclude the risks your short-term rental actually needs covered.
First, Send Your Broker a Link to Your Vacation Rental Listing
The easiest way to help your broker understand how you’re using your property is to send them a link to your online listing—it answers, in one shot, exactly how your home is being advertised and rented, and in insurance, those nuances matter. Copy your listing link into an email to your broker, and ask them to forward it to your underwriter for written confirmation that your policy covers this exposure.
Top Items to Ask Your Broker About STR Insurance
We recommend that you ask your vacation rental insurance broker the following questions verbatim, and request that they respond with a written answer from your policy underwriter:
Ask About Guest-Caused Damage, Theft, & Vandalism
Coverage for damage, theft, and vandalism caused by guests is one of the first places many standard policies fall short when you switch to short-term rentals.
If a guest throws a party, damages your rental, or something goes missing, you would file that claim with your broker — but it isn’t the same type of claim as theft or vandalism from a break-in. Guest-caused damage and third-party break-in theft fall under different sections of your policy, each with its own terms, so you need to know how your policy defines both.
The difference between break-ins and guests who already have entry is defined by a key exclusion found in nearly all Homeowners policies, commonly called “Property Entrusted to Others.” In short, it means theft or vandalism coverage doesn’t apply once you’ve handed over the keys—which is exactly what happens with every short-term rental guest. Property Entrustment is the coverage built specifically to close this gap, covering guest-caused theft, damage, and vandalism up to your policy limit.
What to Ask Your Broker About Guest-Caused Damage, Theft & Vandalism:
If I regularly entrust my property/home to a paying Airbnb/Vrbo short-term rental guest for three days, and that guest throws a party and vandalizes, damages, or steals my property, do I have property coverage to the limits of insurance?
This exact question is different than simply asking if you have coverage for your short-term rental; the differences are the words “regularly”, “entrust”, “Airbnb”, “short-term”, “guest”, “3 days”, “damage”, etc. We have to be specific in insurance, as it all comes down to how these coverages are defined in the policy.
Uncover The Gaps In Your Policy
Learn 10 essential questions about short-term rental coverage to ask your insurance agent to understand your policy’s gaps.
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Ask About Assault and Battery
A claim many hosts don’t consider is assault and battery. Let’s go through a potential scenario. We know that guests drink on vacation, whether or not you provide complimentary drinks. As the music gets louder and your guest gets rowdier, your neighbor decides to come over to request they keep things down, at which point your guest assaults the neighbor. Far fetched? Not entirely. In fact, we’ve seen this more than once in the short-term rental world. Yet, assault and battery are common exclusions on standard use policies.
It’s important that you talk to your agent about these scenarios. You’re running an Airbnb and giving guests access to your property, and you are ultimately held responsible for their actions:
What to Ask Your STR Broker About Assault & Battery:
If I entrust my property/home to a paying Airbnb/Vrbo short-term rental guest for 3 days, and that guest assaults another person who then sues me, do I have liability coverage?
Remember, by operating a rental you are openly inviting guests into your home and community. By doing so, you open yourself up to liability as a result of your guests’ actions. Fire, theft, and assault could all be seen as negligence and thus a lawsuit. This is why insurance exists, just make sure your policy covers this risk.
Ask About Loss of Rental Income
Losing a rental period to a covered loss is one of the most expensive gaps in a standard policy, and most hosts don’t realize how narrow their existing coverage really is until they try to use it. Standard Homeowners and Landlord policies typically include a provision called Loss of Rents or Loss of Use—and the difference isn’t just the name, it’s how the payout gets calculated.
What to Ask Your STR Broker About Lost Airbnb Income:
If I regularly rent my property/home to paying Airbnb/Vrbo short-term rental guests, and a covered loss interrupts or reduces my rental income, do I have coverage for lost business revenue—not just Loss of Rents or Loss of Use—to the limits of my policy?
This is the detail that costs hosts the most: Loss of Rents can leave you paid out based on what a long-term rental nearby earns, even if your short-term rental generates two to three times that. Loss of Business Revenue is calculated from what your property actually earns.
Ask About Invasion of Privacy
A third example commonly overlooked by hosts is the invasion of privacy. Let’s say your guest gets to your property after dark and has trouble finding the correct address, and accidentally walks into your neighbor’s house. Your neighbor could turn around and sue you for an invasion of their privacy. Likewise, if you were to simply mix up the checkout time and walk in on your guests before they had left your property, they could sue you for invasion of privacy just as easily.
What to Ask Your STR Broker About Invasion of Privacy
Coverage for invasion of privacy is not typically included in standard policies, but if you’re going to rent your home out and actively participate in the hospitality industry, you’ll want to make sure you have coverage for this.
If I entrust my property/home to a paying Airbnb/Vrbo short-term rental guest for 3 days, and that guest sues me for invasion of privacy, do I have liability coverage?
Invasion of privacy isn’t the only claim that can start away from your property line. Guest injuries and incidents involving amenities you provide raise the same off-premises question—covered next.
Ask About Off-Premises and Amenity Liability
Pools, hot tubs, docks, bikes, kayaks, and golf carts are some of the biggest draws for guests booking a short-term rental—and some of the biggest liability blind spots for hosts. Standard Homeowners and Landlord policies are usually underwritten without knowing these amenities exist, since they were never disclosed as part of personal, non-commercial use.
What to Ask Your Broker About Off-Premises and Amenity Liability:
If I offer amenities such as a pool, hot tub, dock, or recreational equipment to paying Airbnb/Vrbo short-term rental guests, and a guest is injured using one of them, do I have liability coverage to the limits of my policy?
Liability doesn’t stop at your property line, either. If a guest causes an injury or accident away from your rental—say, a bike or golf cart you provided is involved in an accident down the street—many policies won’t respond, because the incident happened off premises.
Not all liability coverage is created equal. Learn which vacation rental liability risks can lead to costly lawsuits and why many traditional policies leave hosts exposed.
Upgrade Your Insurance Coverage Today
It can be tough to know what your policy covers without going through each possible scenario but that’s why insurance professionals are here to help. For these particular claims, a good place to start is with your current insurance agent. Send them these questions and see what they have to say, just make sure they’re getting the answer in writing from the underwriter of your policy.
If you still have questions or would like to compare your current policy to the custom vacation rental insurance policy offered by Proper Insurance, give us a call at 888-631-6680 to receive a comprehensive coverage comparison or submit an inquiry form to receive a quote.
