Renting by the room - Insurance?

[Jim S.]

I'm in the process of purchasing a 5bd/2ba in Denver as a primary residence. As an individual I obviously don't need all 5 beds so I'm planning to rent out 4 of them to other young professionals in Denver.

Does anyone have experience with the insurance requirements for this? I know that a typical homeowners policy won't cover liability, etc. for this scenario so I'm curious whether people ended up buying. 

It looks like the two main avenues are an add-on to existing homeowners policies or getting a separate landlord policy.

Would love to hear from some people that have rented by the room

[Nicole A.]

I used to rent out rooms in my personal home and we just have umbrella insurance.

Renting out 4 rooms is a lot of people! I recommend that you have your leases only month-to-month. That way if a living situation isn't working out, you have a way to ask them to move without be "committed" to them for 6 months, a year, or however long the lease could have been for.

Be sure you look into your local rental laws too. For instance, since we were renting rooms in our area, we needed to have more smoke detectors than otherwise was needed. Small details.