Natalie Palmer

My name is Natalie Palmer and I do a bunch of different things under the short-term rental niche. Personally I manage 10 properties in the Big Bear, California area and ever since becoming a host I've pivoted my hosting role into different forms of education and media in this space. I have a podcast called No Vacancy, I'm the co-founder of Level Up Your Listing Summit which is a 300-person annual women's short-term rental conference, and Steadily has been a great sponsor and supporter of that.

My specialty is really in short-term rentals and I know Steadily does coverage for long-term rental landlords, midterms, all sorts of things. That's one of the reasons I actually really like Steadily — their coverage is more broad. A lot of short-term rental hosts that I start working with will find that if regulation changes in their area and now they can only host for a minimum of 30 nights, if they had a short-term rental policy before they're kind of stuck with that insurance. Steadily is a lot more adaptive to different hosting models and different length-of-stay windows.

Affordability is another issue. A lot of hosts are so scared of loss of rental income if something happens, or having to give refunds to guests, or the replacement of damages. I know some insurance in the industry promises to offset the cost if any of those variables happen, but sometimes there's a calculation of like, am I spending so much on insurance that it's undermining this fear of potential loss of rental income? Steadily always presents different plans to you and they're really good about working out what you need to make those numbers make sense.

I've worked with so many people at this point and it could literally be anything. It could be a vindictive guest who wanted a refund and for whatever reason tried to claim that the listing had a bug infestation to get a discount. And Airbnb — I love Airbnb — but they will just shut down the listing and say now the burden of proof is on you the host to show us a pest control report proving that you don't have a bug infestation. There's no grace period; they'll just shut down your listing. A host could have had a month's worth of bookings lined up, their listing is shut down, and now they're forced to fork over money to get these inspections done. It's really hard to plan ahead for — suddenly your listing is just gone.

The biggest one is always guest damages and theft. It's few and far between but it's the biggest fear hosts have getting into the space. In my experience 99% of guests are really respectful and great, but it only takes one to cost you. I've heard crazy horror stories — guests who accidentally left a sink plug in and left the water running, it overflows, and if you're on a second story and it flows to the unit below, now you have your unit flooded and you're responsible for the one below too.

I have a friend whose cabin is in Tahoe and she was telling me last month that the guest left to go hiking, left all the windows open, didn't turn on the bear wires, and a bear broke into the place and shredded her curtains and all her upholstery and everything. In those cases, yeah, you could blame the guest because they left the windows open, but if they're not familiar with the area and don't know the prevalence of bears you feel bad charging them. There are cases like that where you just want a safety net — who's going to cover this when you don't necessarily want to go after the guest but you can't take the hit either.

A friend had signed up for Steadily's referral program to get a free quote through her name, so I tried that link out and ever since then I've been tuned in with what Steadily is doing. The website is very user-friendly — you literally just drop in your property address and you get a quote within minutes. They were really good about calling you to follow up, learning more about your business and your budget, and then matching you with the right policy.

A lot of hosts start with a homeowners insurance policy on their property and then start short-term renting it. You can call other insurance brokers and ask them to add an STR policy, but it's just not very comprehensive. A lot of the big-name insurance brokers that you'd see a commercial for — I don't want to name anyone — but they don't understand the short-term rental industry. They don't understand that your listing can get shut down and you lose income, that guests can damage stuff, cleaners can knock things over. Steadily just really understands the industry. When you talk to their reps you can tell they've thought of everything — what happens if there are bed bugs? That's not something a normal insurance policy is going to cover, but Steadily is on top of it because they have to be, because you have tenants in the home.

I have never had to call Steadily support, which is a good thing. Every time I've called or sent somebody else to do a demo with them I always hear, "Oh yeah, they were preempting problems that I could encounter as a host that I didn't even think of."

What I see most commonly is that somebody already has an existing homeowners insurance policy, they start renting, and they call their existing homeowner policy and say, "Hey, can you just add on the STR clause to this?" What's horrible is a lot of hosts don't even do that. There are a lot of insurance policies out there that say the whole policy is void if they find out you've been renting without notifying them. There are so many people who are like, "I have homeowners insurance, I'm covered" — a guest destroys something and now they can't even depend on their basic homeowners policy because the whole thing is void. They've been paying into it with zero coverage. That's terrifying and I've seen it happen a lot.

On the flip side, I've also seen insurance companies in this space where it's one package, take it or leave it, and it might be a little too expensive for what some hosts can afford starting out. You'll get all the bells and whistles covered but depending on your income it might not be the right policy. Steadily really works with your budget to determine what the risk is and whether that's something you want coverage for or not.

Here are a few niche examples that are so helpful to know. Take bunk beds — a lot of hosts will be like, "Oh yeah, we have a bunk bed in this room," they set it up and don't think anything of it. But a lot of insurance policies, if your railing is not high enough, they won't cover a kid rolling out of the bunk bed because you didn't do your due diligence. If hosts don't even know to ask how tall the railing should be, they might get denied coverage for something they didn't even know to ask about. That's why having insurance that coaches you through these things is so critical. You might think you did your due diligence by putting a fire extinguisher in your listing, but if your fire extinguisher expired you're on the hook. You might not even know that fire extinguishers do expire and that it's a good idea to recertify them once a year. An insurance company that knows the industry can tell you that.

So many cities right now, when they implement regulation, hosts have to pivot to a midterm or even long-term rental strategy. Some hosts get into this with every intention of doing short-term rentals and then find out it's too much turnover — "I don't want to be messaging guests and be on call 24/7 for customer service, let me just long-term lease it." Steadily is very good at adapting with hosts every step of the way.

A lot of people I've heard from think that they need both — they still need to maintain their current homeowners policy and add on short-term rental or landlord insurance. That's one thing I really like about Steadily: it's completely comprehensive, so you can ditch the other policy. Even though you are spending a little bit more for the extra coverage for guest damages and such, you can drop the other one. Marginally it's not that much more, and you are running a business so there are some investments that come with that. Having that protection so you can operate your business and see through any unexpected things — it's so worth it.