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213: Airbnb Just Killed the Guest Agreement w/ Katie Johnson The STR Lawyer

from Michigan Short Term Rentals

34m 27s

213: Airbnb Just Killed the Guest Agreement w/ Katie Johnson The STR Lawyer

Airbnb has eliminated guest agreements for all new reservations posted after November 20, 2026, replacing them with only seven enforceable house rules. This radical change removes a critical legal tool for hosts to define expectations, enforce rules, and protect themselves from liability in cases of guest damage, breach of rules, or accidents. Safety signage—like pool or hot tub warnings—is now under threat, despite their proven value in preventing serious injuries, as seen in high-profile lawsuits. Hosts are advised to strengthen their legal defenses by securing high-limit insurance (at least $1 million), ensuring their real property is held within a properly structured LLC, and maintaining strict safety standards. While Airbnb claims this shift streamlines operations and improves guest experience, it disproportionately increases liability risks and undermines host autonomy. Key workarounds include leveraging HOA rules, requesting exceptions for insurance or amenities, and using guest agreements as filters for vetting problematic bookings. Hosts are urged to act now by reviewing their insurance, legal structure, and safety protocols, and to communicate with Airbnb via their wrap services or large property management firms to advocate for changes. The policy shift may also lead to increased host migration to platforms like VRBO or direct booking, which still allow rental agreements and provide greater legal protection. Ultimately, while Airbnb cites operational efficiency and guest-centric design, the change places significant unmet risks on hosts, especially those operating professionally and managing high-risk amenities.

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and LLC where your house is not actually in the LLC is not going to be enough. You want to actually place your house into the LLC and there's a lot of concerns around that. There's some work around we can do, but if you've got a mortgage that's been existing and you've had it for a while, the people are concerned about the do-on-sale clause. To me, that risk is not outweighed by the liability protection that is given to you from placing your house into that LLC. Welcome to the Michigan Short Term Rentals podcast, the show about buying, optimizing, and managing short-term rentals in the state of Michigan. Get insights and recommendations from vacation rental operators to help take your property to the next level. Are you ready to profit from your short-term rental? Let's get started. All right, Airbnb just killed the guest agreement. On November 20th, the document you lean on for damage, occupancy and liability stops being something that you can require. So we brought in Katie Johnson, the STR lawyer for this emergency episode. Give us the deeds. Help us in line. Make sure we are protected. So, Katie, thanks for joining the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Tony and Jordan. It's so great to be back. I'm happy to be here. Happy to break this down. This is a huge change. I've been hosting since 2015, and I think this is the biggest change I've seen in all my years hosting that really has an impact on us host. Yeah, it's wild. So I'm just going to read a little bit about what this is exactly. So on October 20th, Airbnb rebuilt house rules in Olistina. The new policy covers every reservation booked on or after November 20th, 2026. Anything booked before that date stays under the old rules. Housing rules are now seven standard settings. Max overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography, and lock up at checkout. Those seven are the only rules Airbnb will enforce. Everything else you ask of a guest is now a request encouraged, not enforced. Separate guests, agreements are banned with four exceptions. One, it is required by law or by HOA or building rules. Two, it covers access to an optional amenity. Three, this day is 28 nights, or more. Four, it is a lux listing. If a request does not pass Airbnb flags it in the editor, leaves it unresolved and guests may see a notice on your listing and the listing can lose search visibility. Is that does that sound accurate and cover everything regarding the change that's coming out? Regarding the rental agreement change. I think there were other changes as well in terms of what you can ask your guests to do for cleaning and things like that. But yes, regarding the rental agreement, I think there's a good summary Tony. They had additional things in there, but I think that's a good summary. One, I guess I would love to hear your take. Why do you think, why do you think they came out with this rule? Because it really does seem like people's biggest concern is that it leaves a lot of liability on the owner, the property manager. But why do you think Airbnb is moving in this direction? What is it on their side that they're like, hey, this needs to happen? I don't know if it's to live in really trying to stop us from getting any guest contact information because in addition, another change I made is you can't have something like a stay-fi or anything like that to collect information when you have the Wi-Fi. So I think part of this is to stop us from getting guest information because they say with the rental agreement typically if you send it out on your property management system, you are collecting some information. A lot of times you're collecting email addresses from people and so I think they really are trying to stop us from collecting guest information to really try to keep everything on Airbnb's platform and to make it as guest centric as possible. There's always been feedback from people who stay at Airbnb's. The cleaning rules are too much. This is too much. I just want to stay at a hotel because all the rules I have to do on Airbnb are too much. I think a lot of times Airbnb responds to that and they decide to come up with these policies that are guest centric and not host centric which is just unfortunate because the hosts are really the bread and butter of how Airbnb makes their money but they forget about us. Yeah and I also think probably from an operational standpoint this will really streamline in-house. I know they're doing a lot of AI and I know that they're customer service. I think they do a lot of outsourcing of their customer service. So I think streamlining this not having 20 million different guest agreements and all that. Now it's very simple in their world right and it'll be pretty easy for AI to automatically decline that or do that. So it probably will streamline a bunch of their operations as well as the guest centric apartment. You talk a lot about four pillars. Could you just go over the poor pillars that you talk about and obviously this has a big impact on one of them right? Yeah so I always talk about four pillars with mitigating your risk. So we've got the rental agreement, safety, LLC and insurance. So this is knocking out a big one that I talk about. At first I thought okay no big deal we'll just update those house rules and we'll big deal of course but trying to pivot will update the house rules and add an indemnification clause to the house rules because that's really the most important thing in your rental agreement for liability protection. But then I had someone try to do that and they're getting erred out of doing it on Airbnb. They're saying that's a contract you can't put an indemnification clause in your house rules. So this is definitely a big hit to one of those pillars but you still have the other three pillars which are super important to help legally protect you. Another thing that was interesting too in this update is it's making it sound like you can't have any other signage or rules at your property. I think that's going to get pushed back on. Justin Ford the safety guy you might want to have him on too to talk about it but he's concerned because he's like wait does this mean we can't have a no diving sign this is mean we can't have a hot tub safety sign a pool safety sign literally insane. I don't think that Airbnb means to do that at all because that's the first thing a personal injury attorney loves to say is he didn't warn me of the risk. You failed to warn me there were no signs there were no this and then they could put it even on Airbnb at that point because it's Airbnb prohibited signs so it was their fault. So I think that's a huge liability risk for Airbnb and so I do think they'll soften on the signage. So since the guest agreement is going away on Airbnb for the most part is there anything that people should do in the other three pillars before November 20th to help protect them a little bit more. Yeah I think you got to look at those really closely and just make sure that you have everything set up correctly. Starting with insurance one let's look at our insurance policy let's download it get it from your insurance broker whoever else and put it into AI and just say hey am I covered am I covered in my rental do I have off-premise liability do I have on-premise liability or all my amenities covered I offer kayaks bikes whatever else you offer in my covered and just make sure that your insurance policy is really tight and has high enough limits. 500,000 is not enough you got to have at least a million and if you have a pool you might want to even consider higher we've got the inflation as well which is a factor in these things and so you just really want to make sure something happens at your property that you're covered and you don't have to get to the other layers of protection because your insurance company pays out on it. Now the other layer of course is the LLC and making sure that you have an LLC set up and it's set up properly and LLC where your house is not actually in the LLC is not going to be enough you want to actually place your house into the LLC and there's a lot of concerns around that there's some work around we can do if you've got a mortgage that's been existing and you've had it for a while the people are concerned about the do-on-sale clause to me that risk is not outweighed by the liability protection that is given to you from placing your house into that LLC not to mention there's a bunch of exceptions on that rule but yeah you got to start strengthening those other pillars and make sure that you're set up so that for that guest arrival you're just mitigating that liability risk and I can talk about the safety one too. Yeah and so you've worked with us before on some different guests issues right so here's what I'm envisioning is I'm standing on a porch like I was or like our operations manager was a couple years ago and we had our contracts and we're showing the police our contract now it's like I'm showing them my Airbnb app and I'm showing a profile of somebody holding their dog and there's look at here's the rule or here's a description of what like how is that going to work yeah that's a great question to me that's why I really do feel like there's going to have to be some modification they already have exceptions for allowing the rental contract the locks the HOA are legally required so I feel like there's just going to have to be some sort of expansion on those exceptions or that they pull it back somehow I'm trying to think of any other times we've seen them pull things back but I hope that they pull it back and Jordan was talking about this before we started that they're just going to pull it back add additional exceptions add an exception for example for if your insurance company requires it's because some insurance companies want you to have these rental agreements they're helpful not just from a liability perspective but for setting expectations and for protecting your property from parties and other riffraff I find they're super effective and just weeding out bad gas so it's so alarming to me that they are putting this forward and not thinking of consequences it beyond just the liability but the neighbor issues and things like that because I really do think they're effective beyond just the liability piece so being a self-employed person my my it immediately goes to loopholes and workarounds. So the one that stands out there is the HOA rule. So how hard is it to whip up HOA handbook to provide for your house to Airbnb to say, "Hey, here's our HOA rules." And would that look like as a workaround and how viable could that be? I'm going to turn me so I can ever advise people to lie or not tell the truth. I was against my board of ethics, but-- I didn't say lie. I said to create an HOA for our property that it has to fall under. A genuine HOA. That's a little complicated for HOAs, typically they're recorded and things like that. But that's a good question. I think that actually happy guests sent an email out yesterday saying that's what they recommend if people do, that they just say they have an HOA and then they have a rental agreement. Could they could you do that? Potentially, I think the other route though of just adding additional exceptions would be an easier route. So I don't know about you guys, but you probably have an Airbnb wrap that emails you quite frequently. So feel like once you have a certain number of properties, once you bring in a certain number of revenue, you get an Airbnb wrap. So I just encourage everyone to email their wraps and say, "Hey, we need more exceptions for this guest contract. This guest contract is really important to us. We're thinking about pulling our listing off Airbnb and just switching to VRBO and direct only because those allow us to have rental agreements. Not only that, my insurance provider wants me to have our rental agreement. Could you at least add an exception for insurance?" There's something like that. I think more using our persuasion to try to get Airbnb to make a change than trying to just work around around the rules would be what I'd recommend. When you say exception, so the properties we manage, we would have an exception to allow us to do this or what that looked like. Yeah, so it would be like just adding additional exceptions, like maybe the insurance one is the one I'm thinking of or you manage a certain number. Maybe they could add like, "Hey, if you manage more than five, you can have a rental agreement." I don't know. I'm just like brainstorming here because Airbnb Lux seems a little bit arbitrary that they would add that as an exception. It's tending toward nicer homes. I've seen lux homes that are like, but it's interesting that they would allow you to continue to have them there. So that's what I mean by exception, just adding to that list. We have got the four. Let's add additional ways that we can have rental contracts that protect the vast majority of us. What's interesting about it is though, you know, I don't know how many people, how many hosts actually use rental agreements. So how many people are actually affected by this? It's like, it's unclear to me. We're so in the world, Tony and Dran, we're surrounded by hosts, you're professional operators, but there's so many out there that are just casual operators and not thinking about these sort of things. So I don't, it'd be interesting to know the percentage. And I'm sure Airbnb has that data in some capacity, but it would just really be interesting to know how many people this actually affects. Yeah, it's, what qualifies as a lux, sorry, is it like minimum, nightly rate or how do you qualify as a lux rental? Because all the sudden, all booking gathers are now lux, which they can be anyone. That's right. I think you have to apply and it has a special little logo on it. I don't know if you've ever seen the lux before Jordan, but I know I have a couple of people I know who have them and it's just, they're just nice, typically a million dollar plus houses, just nicer. And you, and I don't know how you get approved for it. I think sometimes they approach you, sometimes you approach them. So I don't know that every, I've seen the booking gathers houses, absolutely gorgeous houses. I'm not sure that every single one would qualify as a lux, but I know some of them definitely would. Yeah. Is there anything beyond Airbnb's seven rules that are enforceable against a guest after this point? Well, just have to see the next 30 days since they're saying we can't have any additional language in our listing. So it'll just be interesting to see where it shakes out, to see if they actually stick to that or if they do any modifications. The bigger concern too is the safety signs for the pools, the hot tubs and other amenities that we just talked about. What about warning about bears? Bears are huge risk on some of these areas like the Smoky Mountains. And now are they saying you can't have warnings about bears? It's just, it'll be interesting to see how shakes out. Yeah. So if a guest breaks a rule that Airbnb wanted for us, can we still, will we still be able to take action against the guests, seeing that they didn't sign a contract? I think it'll definitely be harder to go after the guest if they don't have a contract. Now you're just lying on common law and you're also relying on whatever the Airbnb terms and conditions are, which are built to protect Airbnb. I can bet your bottom dollar that Airbnb is going to continue to try to arbitrate cases and they're going to try to move themselves out of litigation. Believe you in the hook, leave you on the litigation hook, not allow you to go to arbitration because the Airbnb terms are for Airbnb and not you, the homeowner. And I've seen that. I just reviewed a bunch of cases, about 2000 cases across the country. And that's something that Airbnb did. They're like, we're going to go to arbitration. By the way, homeowner, you don't have an arbitration clutch. So you're stuck here and state court with a jury and all that because that's something that I love to have in my rental agreements is a jury waiver cause just like Airbnb does. As juries are unpredictable. So it's just so unfortunate how this is going to play out for us. How is this just stripping away so many different rights of ours? We did have a question. Someone asked, can you still ask the guest to sign voluntarily based on what they said? I don't know. That's a great question. I don't think so because they basically said, if you violate this rule, they're going to, I didn't say they're automatically going to terminate you from Airbnb or anything, but they said that there would be warnings and things like that. So I would say probably not under their rules that they are not allowing them period. So I suppose if a guest voluntarily signs it, that's fine. But it's a question of how are you going to get the contract? Because I'm sure Airbnb is going to flag messages that send contracts. They're not going to want to take you off the platform ever. I'm sure they're going to ban that completely because like right now, you can still sign the link off the platform for people assigned rental agreements. I'm sure it's going to be ban now completely because they're also not allowing you to do background checks on people, which is just wild because sometimes I don't know what background check they do, but I think it's questionable at best. And that's an interesting change. And I wonder how that's going to affect companies who literally that's what all they do for their business. I wonder if they're going to push back in some capacity. So it's just really interesting to see how it's all going to unplay. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how hard it would be to create a profile, an illegal profile on Airbnb, like fake ID, whatever, how easy it is to pass that test. Because I think I've heard some people, I think it's not that hard to do potentially, which is somewhat frightening. What happens to the right of entry? What do you mean the right of entry? I'm guessing if you need somebody's in your house, maybe, and then now I need to get into that house. We didn't with the new rules and no contracts. I think while the one that we did a couple of years ago, we based on our rules or contracts, we could enter the home, right? What does that look like now? I don't know. Yeah, that's a great question. I would say in an emergency, you probably can still enter the home, ask for forgiveness after, but really you should always be asking proficient from the guest anyway, under like landlord tenant principles, usually you need to give notice before you're entering someone's house. Yeah, that's an interesting question, Tony, too. It is nice to have that expectation set out in the rental agreement, and now you can't even add it to the house rules, even if you wanted to, because Airbnb is really limiting us on what we're allowed to have. Yeah, because ours, I think, said with malware notice, we can enter the home. So we gave it our notice. They let us it. They let us in. But yeah, it seems like it could be a little bit more challenging going forward, for sure. So you're insurer wants assigned waiver currently under this one. That is not one of the exceptions. Is that, did you already say that? Yeah, that's right. It's not one of the exceptions. I talked to my dad a little bit about it, too, as you guys know, he's a real estate attorney, too. And I was like, hey, do you think insurance could count as a legal requirement? He's like, no, I don't think so. I talked to an insurance company about it yesterday, too. And they're like, yeah, we don't think it counts as an legal requirement. But we're hoping people can update their house rules to include this indemnification clause at the time we didn't rise. That wasn't kind of being an option. So yeah, I think insurance companies are concerned about this too. So that's why I think adding that as an exception would be helpful. And then a lot of people could fit in that exception. It could even be like a selling point for certain insurance companies. Hey, we require an rental agreement. This helps you work around the Airbnb rules. For the optional amenity exception, like hot tubs, pools, kayaks, do you think there's any way that you could work those in where it's like, hey, we can only use the pool with the agreement. I think so. I'll be interesting to see if that means that Airbnb is going to take away your pool from your advertising, though. You know what I mean? As a checkbox, if you say, hey, it's an optional amenity, I don't know. They only listed golf cart as an example of what that would look like. But I like to think that hot tub or pool sauna, any of those outdoor amenities could be included into this optional amenity feature. Or if you had, let's say, a play set or something for the kids, anything that is a little extra risk, I would like to think that you could have that as an amenity. That's why I'm going to be adding amenity agreements to all my templates. I'm creating some kayak ones, golf, boat, all that today. So I can update those so folks can use those in the interim while we are waiting for this to play out more. And currently, as it reads, I think we've talked about this a little bit, but somebody had asked about pool hot tub and dock. signs. Those would technically, the way it currently reads, it's probably not supposed to be on there, but we think that's going to ridiculous. That would be excluded in that those likely should be okay after November 20th. That's my read. We'll have to see. I just can't imagine that Arabian B would be like, you can't have a pool safety sign. I think about hotels. Hotels have pool safety signs, but a lot of this stuff they're trying to mirror to hotels because you know you're not necessarily signing a rental agreement with a hotel. But remember, at a hotel, they have their own terms and conditions that are on their website, just like Arabian B. So they have stuff they can back up to, unlike us, who were just relying on the platform. So yeah, I would not remove those signs and I would not remove them unless I would never remove them, frankly, even if Arabian B requested me to remove them. I just think they're so important. Maybe just remove them from your pictures. Definitely have them. Yeah, you're listing just to warn your guest. So you don't end up in a lawsuit like the $11.6 million lawsuit where there wasn't and no diving signs. Someone dived, became quadruplegic, sued the host. These signs are important. That's wild. So someone has concern over the rules and that's not the overnight guest rule. If you read, it reads as overnight. So what does that mean for daytime? We have a lot of people that like, hey, not everybody's staying in the night, but we are going to have this amount of people on site during the day, but they won't be staying in the night. So one of the rules is overnight guest, right? So that in terms could mean, oh, I can have 16 people here during the day, but no more than eight overnight guests. What's your take on that? And how do you prevent your property from tripling or quadrupling in daytime activity? I think here you can use a lot of local regulations to help you. Like, for example, one of the properties I have has local regulation like eight guest period doesn't matter time or day. And so I've pointed to that before when people are like, hey, I'm going to have like guest here during the day. Is that okay? And I just say no. My regulation doesn't allow it. So even though it's in your house rules that way, maybe you can have it clearing your description as well that hey, daytime guests are not allowed because of regulation or whatever you want to tie it to because I don't allow to have events. That sort of thing, but because most places that you are probably don't want you to have an event in your residential ease owned property. So I think you can probably tie that to regulation. And that's something that would be a loophole like Jordan is talking about. So that's how I would think handle that one. And I don't think that's going to be as impacted. Yeah, this really does seem to like it all have an impact on what they're trying to fight against in terms of like being a good neighbor, being doing right by the community. Like some of these seem very going against that. And it could backfire on them in a bad way, right? And it also seems like more regulation or people will really start to restrict or prevent more air BBs from coming into the community. Yeah, absolutely. And you could I know a lot of people hate regulation, but you could also turn to like your state regulator or whoever and just add a clause must have a rental agreement or something like that. And then that gets as also goes around their loophole as well. Can Airbnb legally stop a private contract or is it just refusing to enforce one? They can't stop you from having a private contract. Absolutely not. But what they can do is they can say, Hey, if that's your choice, and if you're not a lot of my platform, they can stop you in that sense. They can say your listings no longer allowed on Airbnb because you're violating my rules. I make the rules. And you don't fit on. Yeah, lightning round. Signed it anyway. Yes or no, you'd say, should you just try to get the guests assigned or likely that'll backfire on your BB? I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Personally, gosh, we receive a lot of income from Airbnb. So it's like one of those risks. It's like, do you risk you're getting kicked off the platform for a month because you took this risk of having people sign a rental agreement when they explicitly told you cannot. So probably not. Well, they're going to prevent you from even getting their contact information to do that. Is that part of this likely? And even starting to change the numbers. I don't know if you guys have noticed that, but they mine haven't changed yet. But when I was a guest, for example, I texted the host, but it was actually not the host number. It was like a made-up number that Airbnb had. And so it went Airbnb was monitoring it. So they're really like trying to blind copy everyone. The one thing they can't do though, because there are properties is they can't really enforce what you put at your property. So if you have like, hey, here's my contact information at the property. That's a workaround on that. They can try to tell you not to do that, but they really, they don't have the same enforcement mechanism for the Airbnb listing themselves and the messaging. They've got the AI bots looking at all of that now. So that's easier for them to enforce, but the actual places themselves. I think that's, for example, like what I was saying with the signage and stuff, there's not going to be able to enforce that in the same way. Direct book, INZ and Verbo, still get your guest agreement signed. Yes, 100 percent 100 percent. I would be leaning into drug bookings in VRBO. I hope that Airbnb sees a decline in bookings over this. I have people tell me that they're taking their listing off Airbnb. They're like, no, I ain't doing this. I'm just going to move to Verbo and drug booking only. I was telling Jordan yesterday, I feel like there's always good and bad with this, right? Something like this. There's probably people already on my K. It's not all sunshine and rainbows and harder. So it also shakes some of the, the other homeowners off and they're like, yep, I'm out, I'm out. So that last competition. So I do think the more you can stand in there and deal with some of these loves, the better it could get from a less competition and just less people willing to play this game because it seems like it's unfair. Call your insurance agent before November 20th, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Let's call our insurance agent, double checker insurance, make sure it's high enough. This is going to be more important than ever. And to make sure that you're covered, like all those amenities that you have that you've added over the years, one was last time you audited and just made sure that you're covered by your insurance policy. Did you add a hot tub? Did you tell your insurance company? All that sort of stuff is don't we're in? One thing every host should do this week. I would say one thing that every host should do this week is just look at their legal setup now and see how strong it is. Look at their LLCs. Look at their insurance policy. Look at their safety setup. One was last time they checked the smoke detectors. Go check those. Make sure you have CO2, CO2 detectors. Check those railings at your property. Just do all that safety checking too. And that will be really helpful to just prevent a lawsuit from happening. How many, if you had to guess, how many people do you think have a vacation rental that's not in a LLC and how much more exposure is that for not being in there? Do you think 50 percent? We manage quite a few homes. And so I have a small sample pool that I could say, hey, I would guess 50 percent don't at least 50 percent or in an LLC. Wow. I think that it would probably actually be even higher than that potentially. I feel like that's super common that folks just they buy in a personal name. It's easier to get lending and then they just don't do that switch. So it's super common, but I think it's such an easy fix and something you should do just to protect your personal assets. You're building a legacy for your family. So let's protect it. Yeah, absolutely. And you can help with that, right? If somebody maybe has a home in their personal name, they're looking to transfer it over to an LLC, get the LLC set up, do all that stuff. I'm assuming you can help with that, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes. I help people all the time with that. So my bread and butter, so I'd be happy to do a little risk analysis, see where you stand, see if it makes sense for you. Talk about what the next steps are and how to get that done. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you think is really important to this change? Nothing I can think of. I just will be interesting over the next 30 days. It's just got announced two days ago. So I don't know how it will actually play out. So it's a written policy. So how are they going to enforce it? What is it going to look like? Are there going to be more exceptions? So I think we just have to wait and see a little bit. Wait and see, but also be getting prepared just in case along the way, right? A lot of work to do between now and November 20th, for sure. So question for both of you, how likely it is, so I know we don't know what exactly the numbers are. There's a lot of individuals that just have one or two houses on these platforms, but there's some massive property management companies that operate professionally that require these type of forms. Do we think it would be worth trying to get connected with enough, if enough of these companies band together and say, we will pull all of our listings off Airbnb if they don't reconsider these policies. Is there any, you think that could get any legs or any traction? Or is that worth pursuing? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's worth pursuing. That's one of my action steps I would say for folks is to reach out to that wrap. I have a wrap. You guys probably have one and just say, hey, I'm considering leaving Airbnb over these policies. We really need you to change this. I think if the more people say that, the more scared Airbnb might be that people really are serious on this. So I think that's an excellent idea, Jordan, reaching out to those major PM companies. So Cassagas, like the biggest one in the United States, so reaching out to them and other big ones to just really try to push back and use that weight, because they're bringing in and probably eight figures, maybe more of revenue to Airbnb. That's where that sort of weight can be very helpful. The one lawsuit that we had that Katie helped us with, one of the things that really protected us when we had to get this person out was the fact that they signed a rental agreement. It was very clear in there what the rules were what the expectations were. And they broke those rules, which is ultimately what allowed us to be protected against the lawsuit. And so when I look back at that case specifically, what would it have looked if we didn't have those rules clearly defined when we were going in front of the base of the arbitrator, it would have been not good for us. Yeah, that's the same thought. I think that's a good one to touch on is so we had a wrench that booked for two people and then turns out more than two people were coming and going to be 14. Nobody was going to stay tonight. Unless they had too much to drink. And so now all of a sudden it starts to sound like a party. Okay, like this is a can be party and so we ended up canceling it, tried to help them find a different property. They didn't like that and kind of pushed back on us and came after us, right? But again, go ahead in front of the arbitrator and all that. It was like, hey, we have a guest agreement. No more than two, like they set two people, no more than six people at the house, but they told our operations manager, there could be 14 to 20 people for a specific event. It's like that's based on the guest agreement. That's not a lot. And it seemed like that really helped kind of close that case. But yeah, again, if we didn't have that agreement, probably a whole different story. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I guess hopefully we got 20, 30 days to you. Hope we get maybe a little bit of some changes here. I'd really love to see. I think the best case is like the guest agreement can stay in place. I think I feel like it's absolutely necessary. And we've seen it. We haven't had to use it a lot, but I also think we actually had someone cancel this week on one that it was like, here's the agreement. Here's the deposit. Did a background check. Background check was pretty pretty bad. And they didn't want us. They didn't want us on the agreement. They didn't want to put the deposit down. So they ended up canceling the reservation and like sometimes just canceling based on what the guest agreement says. Like it can be a great filter to make sure that you're protected, right? Yeah, that's how I feel. I have a no party policy in my house rules. But then I send my rental agreement out, which clearly explicitly says no parties. And also this is the max number of guests you can have. And so all people reach back out even after they've seen the house rules. But now they get my rental agreement after booking. And they're like, I was just reading your rental agreement. And I see it says no parties. How serious are you about that? I was planning on having a small gathering. I don't know how you would define party. Are you okay with that? And I'm like, no, I'm really not. So you can cancel. And they do. And so that's why I really find the rental agreement really effective to preventing riffraff beyond just the liability piece. So it's just so disappointing that we're being restricted in such a capacity. Yeah. Any last words? I'm hosting a webinar next week. I don't know when you guys are posting this. But it'll be October 28th and Wednesday to talk about all these changes. What to do and how to protect yourself. So I invite people to come. Where would they go to find out? A C R law dot com backslash webinar. Awesome. We'll make sure that's in the show notes. And where else can people connect with you? I'm on Instagram at s here law dot with that Katie. So you can connect with me there. I do a lot of free content. And I'm always answering my DMs right now. They're a little overwhelming. But I'll give back to you as fast as I can. Awesome. Katie, thanks for coming on the pod. Shedding some light on these massive changes. And hopefully we can have you back on maybe six months from now to discuss how things are going. Post no guests agree. But so. Thanks again. That's great. Thanks, guys. Thanks for checking out today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. And if you get a chance, please go over to your podcast player of choice. Leave us a review. We appreciate those that have already taken the time to do so. It just helps us get discovered by more people in that platform. And we'll talk to you later.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Airbnb has eliminated guest agreements for all new reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026, replacing them with seven enforceable house rules.
  2. The removal of rental agreements significantly weakens liability protection for hosts, especially in cases of guest damage, breach of rules, or accidents.
  3. Safety signs such as pool or hot tub warnings are at risk of being banned, despite their importance in preventing personal injury claims, like the $11.6 million diving lawsuit.
  4. Hosts must strengthen their legal protection by ensuring adequate insurance coverage (at least $1 million), properly structuring their LLCs with actual property ownership, and maintaining safety protocols.
  5. Airbnb’s policy shift may be driven by a desire to reduce guest data collection and streamline operations through AI, but it risks harming host rights and increasing liability exposure.
  6. Hosts can advocate for exceptions—such as for insurance requirements or specific amenities—by contacting Airbnb via their wrap service or large property management companies to push for policy changes.
  7. Legal protections like clear rental agreements, indemnification clauses, and guest screening (e.g., background checks) remain critical in preventing disputes and filtering out problematic guests.
  8. The policy creates significant uncertainty, with many hosts considering switching to platforms like VRBO or direct bookings to retain legal protection and control over their listings.

Summary:

Airbnb has eliminated guest agreements for all new reservations posted after November 20, 2026, replacing them with only seven enforceable house rules. This radical change removes a critical legal tool for hosts to define expectations, enforce rules, and protect themselves from liability in cases of guest damage, breach of rules, or accidents. Safety signage—like pool or hot tub warnings—is now under threat, despite their proven value in preventing serious injuries, as seen in high-profile lawsuits.

Hosts are advised to strengthen their legal defenses by securing high-limit insurance (at least $1 million), ensuring their real property is held within a properly structured LLC, and maintaining strict safety standards. While Airbnb claims this shift streamlines operations and improves guest experience, it disproportionately increases liability risks and undermines host autonomy. Key workarounds include leveraging HOA rules, requesting exceptions for insurance or amenities, and using guest agreements as filters for vetting problematic bookings.

Hosts are urged to act now by reviewing their insurance, legal structure, and safety protocols, and to communicate with Airbnb via their wrap services or large property management firms to advocate for changes. The policy shift may also lead to increased host migration to platforms like VRBO or direct booking, which still allow rental agreements and provide greater legal protection. Ultimately, while Airbnb cites operational efficiency and guest-centric design, the change places significant unmet risks on hosts, especially those operating professionally and managing high-risk amenities.

FAQs

Airbnb will only enforce seven rules: max overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography, and lock-up at checkout. All other rules are now just requests, not enforceable.

Private rental agreements are no longer enforceable on Airbnb, except in four cases: legal requirements (like HOA rules), access to optional amenities, stays of 28 nights or more, or luxury listings. Airbnb may flag or block such agreements.

You can ask guests to sign voluntarily, but Airbnb's new policy does not allow you to enforce rules through contracts. They may flag such requests and reduce your listing's visibility.

Airbnb has banned signage in house rules, but this is likely a misstep. Experts believe such signs are crucial to protect against liability and will likely be restored or allowed as exceptions.

Focus on strengthening your insurance (at least $1 million coverage), setting up an LLC with your property actually owned by it, and ensuring your property meets safety standards like CO and smoke detectors.

Yes, Airbnb has restricted background checks, which may limit your ability to screen guests. This makes it harder to prevent risky bookings and increases liability risk.

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