Airbnb can be great for large groups who want to rent a home, or for staying somewhere that doesn’t have many hotel options. I’ve used it on Martha’s Vineyard, on the Texas Gulf Coast, and outside of Gold Coast, Australia.
But it can also be frustrating for guests, from the cleaning fees (when you’re also expected to clean), the chores lists, and unpredictable “hosts” who sometimes drop in on their property. At the same time, it’s a big risk for owners, too!
When you rent a car at the airport, a company hands you the keys to a $40,000 vehicle and trusts you to return it and not to destroy it – and all you’ve given them is your credit card and drivers license. With a home you’re likely talking about an asset worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Avis and Hertz can afford a loss. So can the major hotel ownership trusts. The average person renting out a condo?
Airbnb says they cover hosts up to $3 million. One San Francisco host shares what that coverage actually looks like in practice, when a guest clogged a toilet and created a leak from a separate upstairs unit into the whole home – causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. After six months, they want the owner to settle for about 10% of the costs.
Want to hear an Airbnb horror story this Halloween season? Here’s the story of how I ended up pregnant and homeless and in over $300,000 of debt after Airbnb guests flooded my home. It’s a real cliffhanger.
Would love your thoughts @airbnb and @bchesky. pic.twitter.com/ASvguMlnet
— Coach Erika (@ErikaCoaches) October 19, 2023
I woke up on Friday, April 14th to the sound of dripping water.
At first, I thought it was raining, but looking out my bedroom window, the sky was bright blue.I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway.
Waterfalls of water were pouring from the ceiling and light fixtures. pic.twitter.com/XbUJm82qZW
— Coach Erika (@ErikaCoaches) October 19, 2023
The owner lives in the downstairs unit with her husband and pets. She’s pregnant. When their upstairs tenant left, they decided to Airbnb the unit. They planned to start a family and wanted to keep it available when out of town guests came to stay with them. That would make it possible for family to help with a newborn.
A guest checked out early from a month-long stay, and it turns out they’d (1) damaged a toilet’s water flow valve and (2) clogged the toilet with fecal matter and baby wipes. It overflowed and ran for 15 hours before they knew anything was wrong.
Then I woke up to a nightmare: a literal shitstorm in my own house, flooding all 3 levels of the building that I bought with my life savings.
And remember — it’s fecal water.
50% of the building ruined in 15 hours.
Who did I call first? Airbnb.
What did they do? pic.twitter.com/oBfXN5lGPS
— Coach Erika (@ErikaCoaches) October 19, 2023
I watched final drips of water coming down the 120-year-old coffered ceiling, and my brain could barely register what had happened.
The gravity of the situation hit hard.I was homeless, one week after I hit the 12-week pregnancy milestone and started to share the good news. pic.twitter.com/Xj15BjfAvI
— Coach Erika (@ErikaCoaches) October 19, 2023
They wouldn’t consider a claim until the guest refused to pay estimated costs. So they finally got costs, had them entered into Airbnb’s system, and the guest… said no.
It took 7 weeks for Airbnb’s third party plumber to visit. They had to pay Airbnb’s plumber because “he didn’t trust he would get paid (by Airbnb).”
Then they received several reasons over the course of weeks why Airbnb’s coverage wouldn’t pay, eventually offering a $6,000 settlement.
After reaching out to everyone they could find who worked at Airbnb, past and present, they learned about an “escalation process…where the host isn’t getting anywhere, and they happen to know an employee..” 53 emails later they received a”final offer of ~ $31,000.” And Airbnb removed their Superhost status.
Airbnb is, in the end, just a two-sided marketplace where they take a cut of transactions both from the property owner and from the guest. Beyond that? Mostly at your own risk, which works out fine most of the time, except when it doesn’t.
As the owner relays it, Airbnb said that repairs needed to be completed before filing a claim. And it had tobe done within a couple of weeks. That is.. not possible in this case.
This is what homeowner’s insurance is for. Oh wait, that probably doesn’t cover commercially renting out part of your home. I would think that the insurer would cover things like this for an extra, hefty fee as long as that is done before the problem. A case of the homeowner being cheap and a tenant from hell.
Who would rent out their house, especially the one they live in, without adequately insuring it?
We rent many homes through Airbnb as managers. They have never required that we complete repairs before they will accept a claim. We have only had to supply appropriate quotes within a relatively short time frame. They do require that the work be completed before they will pay and they won’t cover damages to other housing units in the building, only the rental unit. I suspect that most of the damage in this case was not to the actual Airbnb, but to the owners’ own living space.
What does the fact that she claims to be pregnant have any relevance to this claim?
“Airbnb says they cost hosts up to $3 million.”
Do you mean “cover”
Well that’s a crappy situation.
@ Gary — Moral of the story: never be a landlord. (I believe I’ve said this before.)
She has homeowners insurance and a $5000 deductible. Her annual premium went up $6000 from the claim.
It’s a lousy experience but she’s not without shelter.
Not sure why the $300k isn’t something she’s putting in the homeowners claim.
Nothing easy about it but something doesn’t add up about the “debt” here.
@Greg: The damage isn’t to the “home”…. she has a multi-unit building where she has been renting out other units to other tenants and then to AirBnB guests.
But regardless of her homeowner’s insurance situation, either AirBnB actually provides $3 million of coverage, or they don’t, and in this case, it seems they don’t.
On the guest side, AirBnB “guarantees” that if your booking doesn’t work out that they will take care of you. What that actually means is they will “help” you find similar units that are available and rebook you. If they cost more? That’s on you. They wouldn’t even waive their own fee to keep the costs comparable.
Er, 15 hours after her guest left and she didn’t even bother to go 3 levels up to check on the property? I have no idea pregnancy can be so daunting. And obviously the owner lived by herself on the premise as there was no one there to help her out. Yeah, sounds about right.
@ WontonDisregard
Probably DOES mean “costs”. Remember that if Airbnb is going to take sides, it’s always going to be the party who wronged the other. They stand behind too many scummy and scammy owners and too many absolute trash customers.
Yes, the owner shouldn’t have been cheap and have had renter coverage too. Interesting how they never mentioned trying to go after the customer through insurance or lawsuit. They MIGHT have some ground because of the tenant not informing them in writing of the damages they knew they caused. Leaving early is also an indicator of malicious intent of hiding the issue.
Lots of conjecture here in the comments. It’s important to focus on the facts. Namely, that Airbnb offers what they call “Host damage protection” which offers “$3 million in coverage” which supposedly covers damage to your home by guests.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/279
They go on to say that, “Host damage protection isn’t an insurance policy.” (except in Washington State where it is). If it were an actual insurance policy, the homeowner would likely have a lot more rights since insurance is a highly regulated industry and the homeowner could probably file suit against the insurance company, but alas, it is not actual insurance here.
Terms & conditions and excursions of HDP can be found here:
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2869
If it were me, I’d have gone through the above with a fine-toothed comb and then probably retained the services of a competent attorney to go after the company. It sucks what happened to this woman, but whining about it on social media is a lot less useful than actually taking the decisive action she is afforded under the law.
Ummm…they should pursue a bad faith denial of coverage claim. Easy to get a plaintiffs attny on contingency as well for that. That should increase airbnb’s offer pretty quickly.
Note to self: before listing my home on AirBnB, be sure to ask my homeowner’s insurance rep the following question:
“If an Air-BnB guest absolutely destroys my home, that’s covered, right?”
If YES, then list
If NO, then no list
Unless blinded by hypothetical money, that process works.
I think this is another excellent case of someone renting through airbnb who thinks it is a fantastic idea to go into business without consulting lawyers who can advise on the nature of the contracts one is entering into and relevant laws and regulations. Did they have no commercial property insurance? They were previously renting the unit to a legal tenant, and live in a different unit in the building — this is not a “regular” homeowner’s insurance situation. I’m not saying this sort of insurance comes cheap, but surely it is cheaper than $300k in damage — and then the insurer could have their lawyers go after airbnb for whatever their “damage protection” is meant to cover. tl/dl: airbnb is not to blame for naive landlords.
In a way isn’t AirBnB like Hyatt or Marriott while the individual homeowners are like the independent hotel owners and operators?
And if a guest rents a hotel room through the Marriott/Hyatt website but then causes a crap-ton of damage the independence owner/operator is covered via their own insurance policy not via Marriott/Hyatt.
Wouldn’t AirBnB be similar?
Difference here is that AirBnB seems to dangle a $3 million policy to reassure independent homeowners but then has tons of fine print and an overly onerous process on the claims end that it’s clearly operating in bad faith.
Just another reason I’m not a fan of Airbnb and only begrudgingly use them when there are no or few other viable options.
Ah yes, the great creator economy…… sigh
When will people realize that Airbnb has become a form of scam ?
As noted in the comments here, there’s an expectation that this individual homeowner knows what they’re doing and is a sophisticated negotiator of contracts.
That is demonstrably largely untrue.
That disconnect is why some business fields have extra protections for SMALL business owners. It’s also creating problems in a variety of fields, such as software development, where the same conditions are common: small businesses are expected to be as sophisticated as the Chase banks of the world.
The solution is probably to regulate business matters for small business owners in a way similar to how we do so for consumers: tilt the playing field just a bit more towards the little guy.
I don’t trust AirBnB or vrbo to protect me (the host) with their supposed “guarantees.” It’s not insurance. There should be a class action lawsuit against them for pretending like hosts are protected. The fact is that the listing companies want to keep travelers happy and they screw hosts all the time. They know they have us hosts hostage.
In the meantime, hosts should get their own insurance.
Baby wipes should NEVER be flushed down the toilet. Even the ones that advertise that they can be…it is deceptive advertising.
One thing the author does not mention is that unlike a hotel or a car rental, Airbnb does not want hosts to ask for ID and credit card. They say they vet their guests but that consists of getting an ID and email as far as I can tell, only randomly doing actual checks. Each host should ask for ID separately and hosts should be sure their home is insured properly so you can get it fixed while fighting with Airbnb. Vacation re tal insurance is hard to find and ridiculously priced but we have to have it because we cannot depend on AirCover.