$50,000 is on the low side for a freestanding house (house fires are in the high tens of thousands of dollars), but seems totally reasonable for an apartment.
You wonder how much of the concern about the specifics of this announcement really reflect the typical HNer's lack of comfort with the Airbnb model, period. Remember, lots of people on HN would never be comfortable renting their place out period. And that's fine; those people aren't Airbnb customers right now. Plenty of people obviously do find the transaction palatable.
Similarly, terrible incidents like this happen without the fancy Rails app to facilitate them. Ask around for subletting horror stories. How often do we as a community freak out over the concept of subletting? A giant slice of all renters have to consider doing that any time they need to get out of a lease.
Right. I've sub-let an apartment and I was definitely concerned before I did it. If I'm super uncomfortable renting to someone through AirBnB, I'm just not their target market and I suppose a 50K guarantee would probably cover a lot of mishaps.
Also, I'm not sure what the terms are of my homeowners insurance but I would make sure that something would be covered in a situation like this before I rented my place.
You wonder how much of the concern about the specifics of this announcement really reflect the typical HNer's lack of comfort with the Airbnb model, period. Remember, lots of people on HN would never be comfortable renting their place out period. And that's fine; those people aren't Airbnb customers right now. Plenty of people obviously do find the transaction palatable.
Similarly, terrible incidents like this happen without the fancy Rails app to facilitate them. Ask around for subletting horror stories. How often do we as a community freak out over the concept of subletting? A giant slice of all renters have to consider doing that any time they need to get out of a lease.