Just out of curiosity, how many rental days does it take to void your coverage?  I was not aware of this.  I assumed the homeowners insurance with the liability coverage would cover our home.  Our agent did not mention anything regarding it not covering if our home is being rented.

American Family is the only one that would even touch it for us. And it is a commercial policy. It'snot outrageous in price, but it's definitely more than a residential policy.

very important to ask because if they find out you haev a VR, thye won't pay for anything... Home, furniture, etc.

I'm glad to see this discussion here.  I will ask my agent to look up Lloyds of London and American Modern as you guys have suggested.

Here is our story.

Before we started renting out our guest apartment, we asked our insurance agent if our Homeowner's insurance would cover our liability in case one of our guests were to be become injured.  He said that we were covered, so we thought we were fine.

Recently we found out that there was a misunderstanding, as he had thought we meant rentals of 4-6 weeks at a time ... rentals of less than a month are actually NOT covered by our regular homeowner's insurance.  If something bad were to happen, we would have to just "hope" that the guests would agree to pretend that they were long-term tenants, and we would also have to "hope" that the homeowner's insurance company would not find out otherwise.  If they find out that we were running a vacation rental business from our home, they can say that they did not approve of this use and they can refuse to cover any claims.

Now, our usual homeowner's insurance policy costs about $1000 per year.  Our insurance agent has been researching this for the past 3 weeks, and he cannot find any regular homeowner's insurance policy that will cover a vacation home use.  If somebody knows of one, please let me know.  So far, after 3 weeks of research, the cheapest policy he can find is a commercial policy, which would be $4000 per year. 

Right now we don't know what we're going to do about that.  Does anyone have any advice?

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This is the messsage I wrote, before visiting the HomeAway Community Owners forum.  I was planning to post it like that.  But before posting I did a search for other people talking about the same issue.  And I found you guys!  So as I said above, I will pass along the word to my insurance agent (he is independent and can get quotes from anyone), about Lloyds of London and American Modern.

Hi

I just wanted to share the name of the insurance agent that we used for our vacation rental property as he was so helpful and I thought reasonable in pricing.  His name is Jerrell Jorgenson and he is an independent agent.  His company is called We Care Agency 952 835-0169 and he is affiliated with a network of independent agents called the Progressive Network.  

We are in MN so not sure if they cover any other states, but he's worth a try. 

In general I found that independent agents were more likely to be able to help with finding insurance coverage for vacation rental properties.   

Mark