insurance carrier - How to rent-out a low-power electric pontoon boat as optional feature at my lakefront short term rental?
I am purchasing a lakefront second home that I will use primarily as a short term rental in PA (and will use about 10% of the time personally and the home will be in my name). The sellers are transferring to me a low-power electric pontoon boat to go along with the sale. They currently also rent the home and pontoon boat as an optional add-on. The boat rental has been very popular for them and has generated a significant amount of additional rental income that I'd like to reproduce. I spoke to them about how they insure the boat and themselves from liability while renters use the boat. They provided the name of an insurance carrier that they use for the home policy and indicated the same carrier provides a personal umbrella policy that they use to cover themselves for the boat rental.
As it turns out, I use the same insurance carrier so I reached out to my agent about getting similarly set-up. However, my agent, after consulting with underwriters, told me that not only do they want nothing to do with covering the boat when used by renters, but that they will not even insure the home as long as the boat is on the premises and now require proof of sale of the boat before they will insure the home even if we were to forbid renters' use of the boat.
I'm suspecting that the sellers are operating a very risky operation where they didn't disclose everything to their carrier and they would not be covered in the event of an incident.
So, I'm looking for advice for how I may be able to rent the home and the boat but still be legitimately covered by insurance.
It was suggested to me that perhaps I could start an LLC, sell the boat to the LLC, and then operate the boat rental arm through the LLC. However, a brief search through chatgpt seems to indicate that because I would be closely tying the optional boat rental into the rental of the home, that I would be potentially stepping into all sorts of issues and the LLC would not function to "limit liability" as intended in its name.
Has anyone found a solution to this and could share their experience/advice for how to make this a reality?
**TLDR: How do I get liability insurance to cover me renting a low-power electric pontoon boat as an optional add-on feature for the renters of my lakefront short term rental home?**
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