AirBnB is indeed one of the top technology disruptions introduced to any industry, which in this case as you’d know is the property monetization industry that is being disrupted. This affects spill-over markets such as the hospitality industry and a huge chunk of the tourism sector in that now people seeking to rent some accommodation for whatever period of time are no longer restricted to the expensive hotel chains and properties listed officially with travel agencies.

In truth, renting out your couch for the night is now right in your hands and you can sign up today and have your first listing up within less than two hours. Furthermore, you could very well have your first tenant or lodger tonight even, if the vetting process goes smoothly. It’s a very enticing prospect, isn’t it, especially if you do indeed have some extra room to rent out or even if you in fact have your whole property to rent out on account of you perhaps going somewhere?

Many people take great joy out of the fact that they know they can have their property earning them money while they might be away on vacation perhaps, but there is one sticky issue with regards to earning some extra money with AirBnB. Well, it’s just one issue among many such issues, but in this post I’m discussing the issue of how receiving guests at your home affects your household insurance and of course the main channel through which this is done is indeed AirBnB.

Increased premiums

Quite a few different elements come together in contribution to this, but yeah, using AirBnB does indeed increase your household insurance premiums. Obviously many property owners don’t quite know this, which would imply that they don’t really comply with this requirement, but if you were to go through the terms of your household insurance policy, in some or other way the use of a platform such as AirBnB to receive guests as part of a commercial arrangement should be disclosed. This is true even in the event that you took out the insurance coverage before renting your property out using platforms such as AirBnB, or through any other means for that matter.

Increased risk

The increased risk of the payout claims triggering-events taking place is perhaps the biggest contributing factor to the increased premiums you’d subsequently have to pay, but I guess that makes perfect sense. If one looks at the bare bones of the situation, you’re essentially letting a stranger into your home, although it’s not as bad as it sounds since the somewhat public peer-to-peer rating system integrated into the platform provides crucial information about the renter.

Weaker value-retention

What this basically means is that the goods covered under your household insurance policy lose their value much quicker, which also makes perfect sense since they’re now used by more than just the people making up the typical domestic setting. So you might get less than what you’d otherwise have gotten if and when you claim for a payout and that claim is approved.

So all this means is that you’ll have to consider these additional costs when you price your AirBnB availability.