The Importance of Weekend & Vacation Rental Insurance 

Everyone looks forward to a fun family vacation during the summer. Some of my best memories from my childhood have been made during vacations and road trips that I have taken with my parents and siblings. There was always so much to look forward to during these trips: fun games during the long car rides, the interesting stops along the way, and even the forced family photos that we could look back on years later. Since this is something near and dear to my heart, I decided recently to buy a second home to rent out as a vacation property; I wanted to help facilitate memorable vacations for other families, just as I had as a child. As prepared for this endeavor as I thought I was, though, I quickly realized that there were many things I hadn’t thought of: renovations were a lot more of an investment that I initially thought, creating a ‘unique’ experience for guests is a much taller order than I realized, and balancing costs with profit is no easy undertaking. While tackling these tasks, though, I came across an important aspect of renting a vacation home that I never thought I would need: vacation and weekend rental insurance.

“Liability is a huge issue when renting your vacation home out to strangers,” she said, “and you want to be prepared for the worst, just in case.” She emphasized her point with a story about her sister’s own experience with Vacation Rental Insurance (or lack thereof). While renting out her sister’s vacation home, a family’s child was running by the swimming pool, slipped and fell, and broke their arm. The parents of the child claimed that the flooring material surrounding the pool was to blame, and filed a lawsuit. Her sister was deemed at fault, and because her insurance carrier was unaware that she was renting her property, she was not covered; she had to pay the family a hefty price. “Like you, my sister just assumed that the insurance she already had would cover her rental. However, if she had invested in Vacation Rental Insurance, this incident probably would’ve been covered, and she could’ve spent her money on more amenities for her rental property instead of settlement and lawyer fees,” my friend explained.  I had no idea that vacation and weekend rental insurance was even an option, let alone how much more at ease I could be about potential accidents at my own vacation rental property.