Renter concerned about risk in entering into a lease agreement

[Barb Lee]

I want to lease residential property in Washington state to use for a business, not a personal residence. I want to minimize my personal liability and risk. Although I'd like to enter into the contract as owner of my LLC, landlords don't like this. I'm hoping I can convince the landlord to enter into the contract with my LLC and then have me as guarantor. I don't mind personally guaranteeing that the rent will be paid, but I'm hoping having me as a guarantor on the lease with the owner doesn't increase my personal liability against lawsuits such as someone falling on the property and suing me, rather than the LLC. I'd appreciate any advice or other ideas for me!

[JD Martin]

Have you done this before or is this your first attempt at this? I guess if you looked long enough you'd find a LL that would be willing to let you AirBnb their property, but I think you're going to have to look pretty hard. 

Either way, as best as I can tell what you are trying to do is shield yourself from personal liability if an AirBnb guest that you book gets hurt or decides to sue for some other reason. Your insurance, adding the property owner as an insured party, should cover this for the most part - but I can't think of a good reason for the property owner to let you do this. Let's say you somehow manage to sign a lease as an LLC, and during the course of AirBnb someone manages to have some big claim that they sue for and get a judgement beyond that of insurance. In this case, you walk into the sunset because your LLC has no assets, while the property owner loses his/her property and maybe faces their own liability if they don't have enough supplemental insurance?

Again, I don't see the property owner's insurance allowing this to take place. To answer your question, I suppose in theory it's possible if you find a dupe of a landlord to allow you to do this. In my house, I would give you the boot in 2.2.