A $50,000 guarantee seems a bit low. Condos in OK neighborhoods here in Chicago start at around 200K so theoretically a lot more than 50K in damage could be done.
As a home owner and someone who has used airbnb, trust me, $50k will more than cover everything in pretty much every place airbnb rents out.
Just because someplace costs $200k doesn't mean it costs $200k to rebuild from the ground up (a lot is in property, structure, etc...). Realistically, you'd really have to try hard to do $50k+ damage to a typical airbnb property without the cops being called as it is happening.
"Just because someplace costs $200k doesn't mean it costs $200k to rebuild from the ground up "
In Dallas (where I live), a structure usually costs much more to tear down and rebuild new than it is currently worth. For example, you might get a mortgage on a $250,000 10yo house here yet your insurance will be for $375,000 for that reason.
I'm not saying they are, but I'm sure if the structure was destroyed by a sub-letter there is a good chance the landlord's insurer would allege the tenant was negligent.
An unbounded guarantee isn't necessarily reasonable or practical.
On the other hand, your concern probably presages an eventual headline of the future: "AirBnb guests burn down host's home; AirBnb guarantee only covers less than 10% of loss."
$50,000 is on the low side for a freestanding house (house fires are in the high tens of thousands of dollars), but seems totally reasonable for an apartment.
You wonder how much of the concern about the specifics of this announcement really reflect the typical HNer's lack of comfort with the Airbnb model, period. Remember, lots of people on HN would never be comfortable renting their place out period. And that's fine; those people aren't Airbnb customers right now. Plenty of people obviously do find the transaction palatable.
Similarly, terrible incidents like this happen without the fancy Rails app to facilitate them. Ask around for subletting horror stories. How often do we as a community freak out over the concept of subletting? A giant slice of all renters have to consider doing that any time they need to get out of a lease.
Right. I've sub-let an apartment and I was definitely concerned before I did it. If I'm super uncomfortable renting to someone through AirBnB, I'm just not their target market and I suppose a 50K guarantee would probably cover a lot of mishaps.
Also, I'm not sure what the terms are of my homeowners insurance but I would make sure that something would be covered in a situation like this before I rented my place.
Is it possible to damage a condo, without damaging the neighboring units, in such a way that it would cost more than $50k to repair? (Spraying putrescine doesn't count. I don't know why.)
