Ride Sharing

Ride Sharing services like Uber and Lyft shuttle passengers around via access to a mobile app. Ride Sharing drivers for these services need to have the correct Endorsement to their Personal Auto Policy coverage to be fully covered while driving for Uber or Lyft type companies. We can find you this coverage to be compliant!

Car Sharing

Car Sharing is the ability to rent one’s auto to other individuals by utilizing a mobile app. Others can locate your car and rent it for periodic times as you allow or set via criteria in the app. Any consumer should be aware that there are gaps in insurance coverage or even times when this may not be allowed by your personal auto insurance coverage.

Short-term Rentals (AirBnB)

Air BnB creates the same complexities for consumers and their Personal Home Insurance similar to the Ride and Car Sharing scenarios. Call us to find out how we can make sure you are insured correctly if you are an AIr BnB host in your primary residence.

The Massachusetts House and Senate reached a compromise on the short-term rentals bill that taxes and regulates short-term rentals through websites like Airbnb, including language that exempts owners who rent out their properties fewer than 15 days a year. Governor Baker signed the bill into law December 28th, 2018.

Under the new law, all short-term rentals must still be registered and insured, but only people or businesses that offer rentals for more than 14 nights per year are subject to the State’s 5.7 percent hotel tax. The insurance requirements of the law for short-term rentals state that:

1.) Operators must maintain liability insurance of not less than $1,000,000 to cover each short-term rental, unless such short-term rental is offered through a hosting platform that maintains equal or greater coverage. Such coverage shall defend and indemnify the operator and any tenants or owners in the building for bodily injury and property damage arising from the short-term rental.
2.) Prior to an operator offering a short-term rental through the use of a hosting platform, the hosting platform shall provide notice to the operator that standard homeowners or renters insurance may not cover property damage or bodily injury to a third-party arising from the short-term rental.
3.) Insurers that write homeowners and renters insurance may exclude any and all coverage afforded under the policy issued to a homeowner or lessee for any claim resulting from a short-term rental of any accommodation. Insurers that exclude short-term rental coverage shall not have a duty to defend or indemnify any claim expressly excluded by a policy.
4.) Any policy or policy form intended to cover operators of short-term rentals from liabilities, whether the policy or policy form is provided by a hosting platform or an operator itself, shall be filed according to instructions provided by the Division of Insurance.
5.) An operator who intends to operate a short-term rental shall provide notice to any insurer that writes a homeowners or renters insurance policy for the property where such short-term rental is to be located of the operator’s intent to operate such short-term rental.

The tax and registration requirements apply to all short-term rentals, which are defined as:
An owner-occupied, tenant-occupied or non-owner occupied property including, but not limited to, an apartment, house, cottage, condominium or a furnished accommodation that is not a hotel, motel, lodging house or bed and breakfast establishment, where: (i) at least 1 room or unit is rented to an occupant or sub-occupant; and (ii) all accommodations are reserved in advance; provided, however, that a private owner-occupied property shall be considered a single unit if leased or rented as such.