Why Your Homeowners Policy Denies the Claim

Your homeowners policy has a clause in it that makes the entire policy irrelevant the moment you take a booking. Most owners have never read it.

The clause

Homeowners insurance is priced for a family living in a house. Renting to paying strangers is a commercial activity, and every standard policy excludes it. This is not a loophole the carrier found — it is the basis the premium was calculated on.

So a claim does not get denied because the carrier is difficult. It gets denied because you were never covered for the thing that happened.

How they find out

Instantly. Your listing is public, searchable by address, and full of photographs of the rooms in the claim. An adjuster finds it in about ninety seconds, and reviews will helpfully confirm the dates.

There is no version of this where you file a claim and the rental does not come up.

Got it? Now the part that is worse than a denial.

Rescission

A denied claim leaves you where you were. Rescission does not.

If a carrier concludes you had undisclosed commercial use, many policies let them void the policy back to inception — treat it as though it never existed. You were not uninsured from today. You were uninsured the whole time.

The fix takes one email

Tell your carrier in writing what you are doing. In writing — not a phone call — so there is a record of the disclosure.

One of two things happens. They write you a policy that covers it, or they tell you they do not do that and you go and buy one from somebody who does. Both outcomes are fine. The only bad outcome is the one where you never asked.

Also defined: STR Insurance · Host Protection