20 Airbnb Hosting Tricks - guide discussion

Owain_Moneysaver

Corona wrote: »

I guess the other question you could ask is: Would someone's mortgage be counted as an expense against Air BnB earnings?

You may be able to claim a proportion of rent, or a proportion of the interest part of a mortgage (not the capital repayment) as a business expense. Along with phone calls, food served to guests, part of fuel bills, depreciation (wear and tear) on linen etc.

But as you say, you have a choice of claiming the Rent-a-room allowance and paying tax on all income above that, or paying tax on all profits after expenses. You can't claim the both Rent-a-room allowance and expenses against tax.

Ordinary personal allowance, marriage allowance if claimed, and Rent-a-room does approach about £20,000 income before you have to pay tax on your AirB&B.

Kraok

How does airb&b work if you are on benefit?

Sheenihaze

You have Privilege listed as providing insurance cover for Airbnb. Just to let you know that as my existing home insurance providers I contacted them to enquire about cover and was told that they would not be able to insure me and would have to cancel my cover if I proceed with my plan.

Sheenihaze

Can you tell me what insurers consider to be occasional?

FlyingPastor

I've just spent about 10 hours researching insurance for Airbnb and found your guide contain offers from some insurers that are significantly misleading. We are renting out 3 rooms on our top floor under the Airbnb "Private Rooms" category and our previous insurer, Axa, couldn't provide insurance.
After much hard work I managed to get more cover than our previous home insurer provided at a very slightly lower cost and have no limits on our Airbnb activity.
These are the responses I got from the insurance companies:
Admiral - will only provide cover if rooms are rented out for less than 90 days per year
Aviva - they were closed due to the bad weather
Churchill - will only provide cover if room rental is "very occasional"
Direct Line - will only provide cover if room rental is "very occasional"
MoreThan - won't quote
Privilege - will only proved cover if room rental is "very occasional, once or twice a year"
Brightside - they were closed due to the bad weather
HomeProtect - they quoted
Intelligent Insurance - they quoted (and were the cheapest) and didn't have any restrictive terms
Insurance Choice - they quoted but had significant terms and required us to have separate business liability insurance
Now4cover - they quoted
AJ Gallagher - they quoted

JenniferRed

Hi, I am trying to understand what buildings insurance policy for a block of flats would work with leaseholders doing air bnb. Home contents insurance seems well covered in this forum but you also need to ensure you don!!!8217;t invalidate your buildings insurance policy. What if a guest caused a fire and this lead to the whole block burning down, by way of a worst case scenario example? Presumably even if you had contents insurance that covered your flat and air bnb guest action, you would invalidate most building insurance policies? If anyone has experience of this please do share.

JenniferRed

Hi Jessmay, what did you do about ensuring that you were not invalidating the buildings insurance policy on your block of flats?

skipper9

Now that the family has grown and flown I am considering renting a room/AirBNB. My current home insurers Tesco said that in the event of my taking this route they would have to cancel my insurance. Renting would invalidate my insurance. So the search begins....

Timbrels

It has been a nightmare trying to get house and buildings insurance so we would be covered for Airbnb liability. However, Aviva came to the rescue. They could have not been more helpful or friendly and their web site application form was the easiest I found to use. On top of that they were nearly 50% cheaper than our current insurers - Nationwide, who said they would invalidate all our insurance with them if we did Airbnb.

Aviva insures us for liability for up to 6 guests. Also, our outside office and shed were included.

On our way to securing this we hit a brick wall with Direct Line and Admiral, who will not insure a listed building. Also, Intelligent Insurance would only insure 2 guests max per room.

As an existing customer of Aviva, we also received a 20% discount. God bless Aviva!!!

SallyMareike

I've just had refusals from Admiral (90days paying guest max), Legal and General (no airbnb cover), Aviva direct (max 4wks, excl theft & damage).
Please share the contact details for the Aviva that insured you so well! Mine runs out today. Thanks.