There are many reasons people choose to rent out their homes or rooms. Whether you are going to be out of town for a few weeks and no one will be at your house or need some extra cash or want to meet people from all over the world and show off your home town, short term rentals can be a fulfilling and lucrative experience. However, renting your home to strangers from the internet is not without risk (you’ve heard the horror stories). Before you open your home to travelers, make sure you do your due diligence and have the proper protection in place.

Contact the Hosting Service – Many hosting services can offer an insurance package that can protect your home while you have guests visiting.  In this situation, you should verify how these policies function and examine if the protection is covered by your regular insurance and if it is enough to cover what’s in your home. If not, consider removing your more valuable item before guests come to stay.

Check with Your Provider – Hosting other individuals in your home may affect your current policy. Oftentimes, your current policy is rendered null and void when you use your home for commercial purposes. Talk with your agent about your options and whether your policy will continue to cover you when your home is not being occupied by guests if you begin to rent it out.

Look up Your Guests – Many services require the guests to produce a photo of themselves and provide ways for guests to verify their identities. They may even have reviews from other hosts on the service. Take advantage of these resources to ensure you are renting to responsible and accountable guests.  In addition to features to validate guests, most services also offer messaging features to allow you to communicate with potential guests before agreeing to rent out your place. If you have concerns, try to express these in your messages back and forth. Developing a good line of communication will allow both of you to feel more at ease about the process and share information and tips once a reservation is made.

Make a Good Impression – Now that you have those initial concerns out of way, take the time to get down to being a good host. Firstly, be sure to clean your home and remove any fragile items, such as expensive art or family heirlooms, out of heavily trafficked areas. That being said, still make sure your house feels like a home. No one wants to stay in a room with blank walls and barren floors. Try to have a friend, ideally someone who hasn’t been to your home before, come over after you set up the accommodations. If that person finds your house comfortable, there is a good chance that your guests will too.

Develop a Game Plan – The final step is to make sure that you have a plan to make sure your guests are accommodated. Whether that means providing your neighbor with keys in case the sink leaks or providing extra sheets in the linen closet, these are all things to consider. If a guest provides a poor review of your home, that could end your potentially prosperous home rental service before it even begins to bloom.

After the first few times, the set up process will surely become much easier. Now equipped with this knowledge, go out there and seize the mini-real estate mogul you know you can become!