How to safeguard your Airbnb Property

If you're considering becoming an Airbnb owner, then you may be wondering how safe it is to rent out your property to complete strangers? Although the majority of Airbnb renters are very trustworthy, you can never be too safe when it comes to protecting your rental property. So, here is a list of ways to safeguard your property against parties, theft, and accidental damages.

Parties

According to Schofields Insurance, some ideas for avoiding parties happening at your property are:

• Make your party-free expectations very clear and be open with your guests
• Screen all your guests before accepting them to get a possible idea of their personality
• Beware of one night stays because these are more likely to be party bookings
• Check if there are any holidays/local events happening at the time of the stay that are likely to attract party-hosts
• Give your neighbours your number in case it appears your guests are having a party (or if you live locally, you could always do a drive-by to see if anything looks out-of-the-ordinary)
• Make sure you are insured to cover all aspects of damage and property misuse
• The last step is to call the police if you discover a is party is raging at your property

If you want more ideas on how to prevent parties happening at your Airbnb property, then check out this previous article.

Theft

Lodgify believes that thieves are less likely to steal from your home when you apply these steps:

• Create a rental agreement including house rules and ask for a security deposit to safeguard your property
• Make an inventory of items that you check every time a guest leaves to make sure nothing has been taken (you could also take photographs to remember)
• Avoid leaving anything valuable or expensive in your rental property
• Add your logo to items that are likely to be stolen to dissuade thieves
• Install security cameras outside your property so you can catch the thief in the act (for something like a television)

Accidental damages

• You should have a security deposit, and also make the repercussions known for accidental damages to the property, so guests know what to expect if they do break something accidentally
• As Host Tools says, if you don’t have a security deposit then you could also request a reimbursement from the Resolution Center within 14 days/ before the next guest's check-in (whichever comes first)
• You could take out Airbnb Host Protection Insurance for your property
• Or, if your property is managed by a rental company such as Zodiak Management, then we inspect your property after every checkout so that we can charge the appropriate guest in case anything happens straight away!

Our advice is that the majority of your guests will be absolutely lovely and would never dream of throwing a party at your property/stealing from you. However, a terrible guest can really ruin this and cause a lot of unnecessary trouble. So we would definitely recommend implementing some of these ideas into your Airbnb property to safeguard you against parties, theft, and accidental damages.