How to Find Short-Term Rental Owners Who Need STR Insurance

How insurance agents find short-term rental owners in public permit records, which cities require proof of insurance, when to reach out, and how to stay compliant.

Published Oct 23, 2026 · 26 min read · by Lead Mining Company

Short-term rental owners are one of the few insurance prospects whose names and property addresses sit in public government files. Cities, counties and some states make hosts register or get a permit, and many of those registers are published. As of October 2026, the PermitPulse dataset holds 283,611 short-term rental permit records from 64 public registers, and 127,924 of them (45%) carry a phone number or an email address. This guide shows an insurance agent or agency how to use those records: why short-term rental owners need a different conversation from ordinary homeowners, which permit programs ask for proof of insurance, how to find owners by state and city, when to reach them, and how to do it within the telemarketing, email and licensing rules.

It is written for property and casualty agents, independent agencies, and carriers' direct teams that write landlord, dwelling, short-term rental or small commercial packages. It does not tell you what to quote or which carrier to place with. It tells you who the owners are, where they are, and what the public record says about them.

What a permit record gives an insurance agent

A short-term rental register is a list the government keeps of properties allowed to take paying guests for short stays, usually under 30 days. Each register publishes its own set of fields. Across the registers in the dataset, these are the fields that matter to an agent:

Property address. The insured location. Nearly every record has it.
Name on the permit. The owner, licensee or applicant. Florida's statewide license file, Nashville's register, New Orleans' applications and Wisconsin's license file name the holder on almost every row.
Mailing address. Where the owner gets mail, if the register prints it. In Florida 51,116 of 53,152 records carry one; in Tennessee 31,672 of 33,731 do.
Phone and email. Published by some registers and not others. Louisiana, Florida, California, Wisconsin and Arizona are the strong states; Tennessee, Oregon, Illinois, South Carolina, North Carolina, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Wyoming publish none.
Permit type. Owner-occupied or not, whole home or rooms, house or condo, commercial or residential owner. Each of these changes the risk.
Status and dates. Pending, issued, active, expired, revoked. Some registers publish filing or issue dates.

The permit does not tell you who insures the property, what the policy says, or when it renews. It tells you that a named person or company has told the government it runs a short-term rental at a given address. For an agent that is a better starting point than a list of homeowners, because the activity that creates the coverage question is on the record.

Why a homeowners policy often falls short for a short-term rental

The reason short-term rental owners are a distinct insurance market is that a standard homeowners policy is written for a family living in a house, not for a house that takes paying guests. Regulators have said this to consumers directly.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), in a March 2020 consumer piece on home-sharing, says homeowners policies "usually exclude or provide limited coverage for homeowners running a business in the home," and that if a property "is listed with any frequency, there is a good chance the activity will be defined in the policy as a home-based business." It adds that a guest who is injured might be excluded if the person "is a paying guest on a property offered as a rental." The NAIC's advice to hosts is to talk to an agent or insurer about home-sharing and to consider coverage beyond the homeowners policy.

The Mississippi Insurance Department's consumer page on home-sharing makes the same point more bluntly: "Most Homeowners or dwelling insurance policies are not designed to cover accidents arising from short-term rentals." It notes that many policies contain a business exclusion that removes liability coverage for bodily injury, that "occasional" rental is generally not defined, and that insurers may deny coverage even where a policy appears to address rentals. It names a landlord policy as one option, covering the home, other structures, contents, lost rental income and liability.

For an agent, that gives you four questions the owner may never have asked:

Does my current policy know about the rental? Many owners bought a homeowners policy before they listed the property, or bought the home as a second home and never told the carrier how it is used.
What happens if a guest is hurt? The guest injury question is the one regulators keep raising, and it is the one with the largest potential loss.
What about lost income? A fire or storm that closes the property for three months costs an owner bookings as well as repairs.
What does the city require? Several permit programs ask for proof of liability insurance at a set amount. Those are covered below.

None of this means every owner on a register is uninsured or underinsured. Some already carry a short-term rental policy, a landlord policy with the right endorsements, or a commercial package. The point is that the register tells you who runs a rental, and the regulators tell you why that matters to the policy.

What Airbnb's AirCover does and does not cover

The first objection most agents hear is "Airbnb covers me." It is worth knowing exactly what Airbnb says about its own program, from its own pages, so you can answer without overstating anything.

AirCover for Hosts has two parts. Airbnb's page lists "$1M liability insurance" and Host damage protection that can "reimburse costs up to $3M USD." The page describes the program as "Only on Airbnb."

Part	What Airbnb's help pages say	What it leaves out, per the same pages
Host liability insurance	$1 million in coverage if the host is found legally responsible for bodily injury to a guest or others, damage to or theft of a guest's or others' property, or guest damage to common areas such as building lobbies and nearby properties.	Damage or injury from something done intentionally; damage to the host's own place or belongings caused by a guest (that falls under Host damage protection instead); hosts offering stays through Airbnb Travel, LLC; hosts of Experiences or Services; hosts offering stays in Japan. "Other exclusions apply."
Host damage protection	Reimburses hosts up to $3 million if a guest damages the place or belongings during an Airbnb stay. Airbnb's help page states that Host damage protection "is not insurance or a financial service."	Normal wear and tear, loss of currency, loss due to acts of nature, injury or property damage to guests or others, and cleaning associated with normal check-out tasks. The reimbursement request is due within 14 days of the guest's checkout.

Three practical points follow for the agent conversation:

It is tied to Airbnb bookings. Airbnb describes AirCover as available only on Airbnb. An owner who also books through Vrbo, a property manager's site or their own website has nights that are not Airbnb stays.
Host damage protection is not insurance. Airbnb says so itself. It does not cover acts of nature, which is where the largest property losses come from.
The liability part has its own exclusions. Read the program summary before you describe it to an owner. Do not tell an owner they are uncovered; tell them what the platform's own page says, and offer to review their policies side by side.

A note on cities: some permit programs accept platform coverage as proof. Arizona's statute lets a city accept booking through a marketplace with "equal or greater coverage" instead of the owner's own policy, and a New Orleans training slide for non-commercial permit applicants says an additional insurance policy is not required if listing on Airbnb. So the city's requirement alone will not always make the sale. The gaps in coverage are the stronger reason to talk.

Permit programs that ask for proof of insurance

Some permit programs make liability insurance a condition of the permit. Where they do, every new applicant needs a certificate or declarations page in hand, and every renewal may ask for it again. Those owners are looking for proof of coverage at a specific moment, which is when an agent is useful.

The table lists programs whose official pages we read in October 2026 and that state an insurance requirement, with the size of the register in the dataset. Requirements change, so confirm the current rule on the city's page before you quote it to an owner.

Program	What the official page says	Records in the dataset (October 2026)
Lexington, Kentucky	A certificate of insurance or other valid proof of general liability insurance of not less than $1,000,000 per occurrence, which must remain in effect at all times while the rental is licensed.	1,467 records in the Lexington-Fayette public view
Norfolk, Virginia	Proof of liability insurance covering injury to a guest on the property: at least $300,000 for an administrative (by-right) permit, including medical payments if under a homeowner's policy; at least $1,000,000 for a permit that needs a conditional use permit from City Council. Administrative permits are valid for two years.	163 records, 146 with an email address
New Orleans, Louisiana	The residential owner permit application asks the owner to attest to holding insurance that meets City Code Sec. 26-618(A)(1). The city's December 2019 handbook described that as a $1,000,000 commercial general liability policy. A January 2025 non-commercial training slide says an additional policy is not required if listing on Airbnb.	28,104 permit applications, 4,314 active licenses and 1,231 non-commercial licenses
Green Bay, Wisconsin	"Proof of insurance" is one of the items required with the initial short-term rental permit application, along with a $500 application fee.	455 permits in the city register
Chattanooga, Tennessee	The application asks applicants to upload documents "such as your deed, proof of insurance, and escape plans." The fee is $250 for a homestay and $500 for an absentee rental.	558 active vacation rental records
Arizona (state law)	Arizona Revised Statutes 9-500.39(B)(8) lets a city or town require liability insurance "in the aggregate of at least $500,000," or require that the rental be offered through an online lodging marketplace that provides equal or greater coverage.	5,503 Arizona records, including 842 in Lake Havasu City and 713 in Tempe

Two details are worth knowing before you build a pitch on these rules.

First, a requirement does not always mean the city collects the document up front. Lake Havasu City's permit FAQ says applicants do not have to provide proof of liability insurance when applying, but adds that the owner is responsible for complying with the requirements and must provide valid documentation "upon the request of the city within 10 calendar days of the request." An owner who gets that request has ten days to produce a certificate. Arizona's statute also limits a permit application to a short list of items (owner contact details, the property address, tax documentation, an emergency contact, a written commitment to follow the law and a fee), and proof of insurance is not on that list.

Second, the amounts differ. Norfolk asks for $300,000 on a by-right permit and $1,000,000 on a conditional use permit. Lexington asks for $1,000,000 per occurrence. Arizona sets a $500,000 aggregate floor for cities that choose to require it. An owner with properties in two places may not know which limit applies where. That is a reason to call, and a reason to keep the city's page open while you do.

Many other programs ask for insurance too, and others do not ask at all. We list only the ones whose official pages we read. If your agency works a market that is not in the table, read that city's permit page before you mention a requirement. The permit requirements by state guide is a starting point for which places permit at all.

Short-term rental records and contacts by state

The table below shows the states with the most short-term rental records in the dataset, as of October 2026, and how many carry a phone number or email. A record without a phone or email still has a property address and usually an owner name, so it can be mailed.

State	Records	With phone or email	Best first channel
Texas	57,734	9,017	Mail; the statewide hotel-tax file includes hotels, so filter first
Florida	53,152	39,708	Mail or phone; mailing address on nearly every license
Louisiana	34,063	29,350	Email, phone or mail
Tennessee	19,532	0	Mail
Washington	29,622	879	Mail
California	24,522	19,420	Phone or mail
Wisconsin	13,374	13,064	Email or mail
Colorado	10,105	304	Mail
Oregon	6,943	0	Mail
Arizona	5,503	4,790	Phone, email or mail
Illinois	4,231	0	Mail
Kentucky	4,029	2,531	Email, phone or mail
Georgia	3,675	3,043	Email, phone or mail

Three things stand out for an agency planning a campaign.

Contactability is a property of the register, not the owner. Tennessee has 19,532 records and none carry a phone or email, because Nashville's and Chattanooga's registers do not publish them. Louisiana has 34,063 records and 29,350 carry a phone or email, because New Orleans publishes them. Plan the channel state by state.
Texas needs filtering. The largest Texas file is the state hotel-occupancy-tax permit roll, which covers hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts as well as houses and condos rented for under 30 days. The Texas hotel tax guide shows how to separate them by business code before you mail.
Florida is the largest contactable file. The state's vacation rental license file is statewide, names every licensee and carries a mailing address on nearly every record. Phones are published on about three in four.

Finding owners in one city, step by step

Most agencies write in a handful of counties, not a whole state. Here is the method for building a city list from permit records.

Find the register that covers the city. Some cities run their own (New Orleans, Nashville, San Diego, Lexington). Some are covered by a county (Sonoma County, Summit County in Colorado) or by a state file (Florida, Wisconsin, the Texas tax roll). The register directory lists all 64 with their record counts.
Read the register's own page. Note which fields it publishes, whether it includes expired permits, and whether it dates each record. A register that keeps every expired permit will overstate the number of operating rentals.
Filter by status. For a new-business campaign, keep active, issued and pending records. Drop revoked and denied ones unless you want to know who left the market.
Split by permit type. Owner-occupied and absentee, house and condo, whole home and rooms. Each gets a different letter.
Group by owner name. One name on several permits is one prospect with several locations, which may fit a commercial package better than several dwelling policies. The multi-property owners guide shows the grouping method.
Pick the address to mail. Use the mailing address where the register prints one. For an absentee owner the property address reaches the guest, not the owner.
Check single addresses as they come in. When a referral or a quote request names an address, the free STR permit lookup shows whether it appears on a public register.

The city and market pages on this site, such as New Orleans and Louisville, show these counts for each place: records, contact fields, permit types, owner names and the share held under names with several properties.

Worked examples with real counts

New Orleans: a market where the city names the insurance rule

New Orleans is the clearest case for an agency. The city's residential owner application has the owner attest to holding insurance that meets the city code, and the city publishes contact details on its permit records. In our New Orleans market file, as of October 2026, there are 33,638 records, 29,221 with a phone or email, and 6,120 dated in the last 12 months.

The permit classes split the market for you. Our file counts 15,482 records typed simply "Short Term Rental," 6,488 non-commercial, 5,479 commercial owner, 4,059 residential owner and 1,724 operator records. In the applications register, 57% of commercial-owner applications are in a company's name (2,384 of 4,184), while residential-owner applications are almost all individuals (72 of 4,059 in a company's name). That gives two different campaigns:

Commercial owners in a company's name. Pitch a commercial package or a schedule of locations. Ask for the person who handles insurance.
Residential and non-commercial owners. The residential owner application requires the rental to sit on the same lot as the owner's primary residence, with a homestead exemption. The non-commercial training material says ownership by a business entity is prohibited and a person may hold only one such permit. Pitch the homeowner-plus-rental conversation: what the homeowners policy says about guests, and what the platform does and does not cover.

Kentucky: two cities, two kinds of file

Lexington requires $1,000,000 per occurrence in general liability for every licensed short-term rental. Louisville is next door in the same state plan. The two files are very different. In our Kentucky data, as of October 2026, there are 4,029 records and 2,531 with a phone or email, and nearly all the names and contacts come from Louisville, whose market file has 2,537 records with 2,506 contactable. Lexington's 1,467 records are mainly address-level.

So a Kentucky campaign has two halves. In Louisville you can email or call (after a Do Not Call scrub). In Lexington you mail, and the letter can open with the city's own requirement, quoted from the city's page, because the city lists a certificate of insurance among the items every licensed operator must provide. Kentucky also had 2,653 records dated in the last 12 months, the newest in mid-October 2026, which makes it a good state for the new-filing timing described below.

Norfolk: small, email-only, with two insurance limits

Norfolk's register has 163 records, and 146 carry an email address but no phone. The city's two limits ($300,000 for administrative permits and $1,000,000 for conditional use permits) and its two-year administrative permit term make it a tidy test market for an email-and-mail sequence. A small register is also a good place to measure response before you spend on a big state.

Florida: houses, condos and owners with many licenses

Florida's license file is the biggest contactable short-term rental file in the dataset. Of 53,152 Florida records, 35,119 are typed as dwellings (houses) and 14,990 as condominiums. A condo owner's coverage questions involve the association's rules and master policy as well as their own unit, so split the two before you write a letter. The NAIC's consumer advice to hosts includes being aware of local laws and association bylaws.

Florida also shows how many licenses sit under one name. In our Florida city data, 5,858 records (11%) sit under a name that appears on two or more Florida addresses, and 999 under names on ten or more. The largest single name appears on 86 addresses. Some of those names are management companies holding licenses for homes they manage, not owners. Either way, a name on ten or more licenses is a commercial account conversation, not a personal lines one.

Lake Havasu City: every record contactable

Lake Havasu City's register has 842 records, and every one carries a phone number and an email address in our file. 282 records sit under names that hold two or more properties in the city, and 70 under names that hold ten or more; the largest holds 25. The city's FAQ is the one that says proof of liability insurance is not collected at application but must be produced within ten calendar days if the city asks. A letter that says "if the city asks for your certificate, you will have ten days" is accurate and specific.

Reading a record for underwriting clues

A permit record is not an application, but several fields tell you how to approach the owner and which product to lead with.

Owner-occupied or not. Nashville's register marks it. Of 31,911 Nashville permits with an occupancy label, 20,179 (63%) are for homes the owner does not live in. Of the permits currently active, 8,791 are not owner-occupied and 3,715 are owner-occupied. An owner who lives on site and rents a room has a different exposure from an investor whose house is rented every night.
Person, company or trust. In Florida, 44% of named licenses are in a company's name; in Nashville, 39%; in Wisconsin, 43%. In Summit County, Colorado, 14% name a trust. Companies often have a commercial agent already. Individuals are more likely to have bought a homeowners policy and kept it. The research on who holds permits breaks this down by register.
Number of properties. In Tennessee, 12,733 of 33,731 records (38%) sit under names on two or more addresses; the largest name appears on 334. In Nashville, 43 names hold 50 or more permits each, 5,311 permits in all, and many read as apartment buildings where each unit is permitted separately. That is a building risk, not a house.
House, condo, room. Florida types every license as a dwelling or a condo. Seattle types properties as single family homes, townhouses, condos, apartments and in-law units. San Diego licenses by tier: Tier 1 part-time, Tier 2 home sharing with the host on site, Tier 3 and Tier 4 whole homes.
Status. A pending permit is an owner in the middle of the paperwork, which is often when an insurance certificate is needed. The pending vs. granted guide covers how registers show this.

Use these fields to segment, not to underwrite. The record does not replace an application, an inspection or a loss history.

Timing outreach to new permit filings

The best moment to reach a short-term rental owner about insurance is when they are setting up the rental or renewing the permit. That is when they are reading the city's checklist, and in several cities that checklist includes proof of insurance.

New records each week. Over the 15 full weeks from July 6 to October 18, 2026, the dataset captured 10,505 records it had not seen before, about 700 a week, of which 6,426 (about 428 a week) carried a phone or email. Weeks ranged from 454 to 1,476 new records. In the week of October 12 to 18, 2026, there were 938 new records, led by Nashville (207), the Florida license file (198), Austin (120), San Bernardino County, California (118) and the Texas hotel-tax roll (79). The fresh records page lists each week.

We call these records "new to the dataset" or "first captured," not new permits. A record can be new to us because the register added it, because the register published an older permit for the first time, or because we added the register. Where the register publishes a filing or issue date, we keep it, and you can sort by that instead.

Records dated in the last 12 months. Some registers date each permit, so you can see recent filings directly. As of October 2026, 27,005 records in the dataset are dated in the last 12 months, including 6,189 in Louisiana, 5,473 in Texas, 3,372 in Illinois, 2,653 in Kentucky, 1,800 in California, 1,728 in Tennessee, 1,577 in Colorado and 1,540 in Ohio.

Renewal cycles. Several programs renew on a fixed schedule, and a renewal can bring the insurance question back:

Charleston, South Carolina: business licenses expire December 31, and the short-term rental permit expires annually and is renewed in the month it was issued.
Lexington, Kentucky: the special fees license is renewed every year, and the liability insurance must stay in effect while the rental is licensed.
Norfolk, Virginia: administrative permits are valid for two years.
San Diego, California: licenses expire two years from issuance and may be renewed.
Lake Havasu City, Arizona: permits are valid for one year from issuance.

Where a register publishes an issue date, you can work out the renewal month and write a few weeks before it. Where it does not, an annual mailing at the city's main renewal season does the same job less precisely.

A practical cadence. Pull the new records each week, mail them in a weekly batch, and follow up on the ones with published email or phone within the next two weeks. A permit record captured on Monday can be in the mail by Friday. Owners who have just filed are deciding things; owners who filed three years ago have already decided.

Compliance for insurance outreach

This section is a summary, not legal advice. Insurance solicitation sits under two sets of rules: the general telemarketing and email rules that apply to any business, and the insurance licensing rules that apply to you as a producer. Have your compliance contact or counsel review your program before you start.

Calls and texts

Many permit records list a phone number that belongs to an individual, often a personal mobile. Treat those numbers as consumer numbers.

The TCPA applies. Do not use an autodialer, a prerecorded voice or an artificial voice to call these numbers without the owner's prior express written consent. The FCC ruled in February 2024 that the TCPA's limits on "artificial or prerecorded voice" calls cover AI-generated voices. Do not text without consent.
Scrub the National Do Not Call Registry. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule says sellers and telemarketers must synchronize their lists with the National Registry every 31 days. The Rule's Do Not Call prohibition does not apply to business-to-business calls, but an individual's mobile number on a permit is not a business line just because the person owns a rental.
Call within hours. The Rule bars calls before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time at the location called. The owner may not live where the property is, so use the owner's mailing address to set the time zone where you have it.
Keep your own do-not-call list and honor it permanently, across list refreshes.
Check state law. Several states add their own telemarketing rules. Our guide to calling STR owners under the TCPA and DNC rules covers this in more detail.

Email

The CAN-SPAM Act does not require consent to send commercial email, but it sets rules for each message. The FTC's compliance guide lists them: accurate header information that identifies the sender, a subject line that reflects the content, a clear statement that the message is an advertisement, a valid physical postal address, a clear way to opt out, and honoring opt-outs within 10 business days. The FTC also says "The law makes no exception for business-to-business email," that you cannot contract away your responsibility if a vendor sends for you, and that each separate email in violation can bring penalties of up to $53,088.

Mail

Postal mail is the lowest-risk channel. It sits outside the TCPA and CAN-SPAM. It is also the only channel that works for the states whose registers publish no phone or email. What the letter says is still subject to advertising rules, including the insurance-specific ones below. The direct mail guide covers segmenting and addressing.

Insurance licensing

Insurance solicitation has its own licensing rule. The NAIC's Producer Licensing Model Act, which states use as the template for their producer licensing laws, says in Section 3: "A person shall not sell, solicit or negotiate insurance in this state for any class or classes of insurance unless the person is licensed for that line of authority." Section 8 provides for nonresident licenses for producers licensed and in good standing in their home state.

What that means for a permit list: if you mail owners of properties in a state where you are not licensed, you may be soliciting insurance in that state. Short-term rental owners often live in one state and own in another, so check both the property state and the owner's state against your licenses before a letter goes out. The model act is a template; each state's own statute and insurance department rules are what apply, and your state may also regulate insurance advertising content. Your carrier or agency compliance contact is the right person to approve the copy.

A sample outreach sequence

This sequence assumes you have a new batch of permit records for a city where you are licensed, split into absentee owners and owner-occupied hosts. It uses mail first because mail works for every record and carries the least risk. Adjust the timing to your own capacity.

Day	Channel	Who	Purpose
0	Letter	Every record in the batch	Introduce yourself, name the property and the city's rule, offer a policy review
7 to 10	Email	Records with a published email	Short follow-up with one link and a reply path; CAN-SPAM compliant
14 to 21	Phone, dialed by hand	Records with a phone that passed a Do Not Call scrub	Ask one question: does your policy know the home is rented to guests?
30 to 45	Second letter	Everyone who has not replied or opted out	A one-page coverage checklist they can use with any agent
Renewal month	Letter or email	Owners whose permit renews on a known date	Remind them of the city's renewal and offer a certificate in time

First letter

Dear [Owner name],

The City of [City] lists [property street address] as a short-term rental under permit [permit number]. I am a licensed insurance agent in [State], and I work with short-term rental owners in [City].

Two things are worth checking on any rental home. First, homeowners policies often limit coverage for business use and for paying guests; the National Association of Insurance Commissioners advises hosts to ask their agent about it. Second, [City] requires [requirement as stated on the city's page, e.g. general liability of at least $1,000,000 per occurrence]. If you ever need a certificate for the city, you need it quickly.

I will review your current policy and your platform's coverage side by side, at no charge, and tell you in writing what I find. Call or text [number], or reply at [short URL].

[Name], [Agency], [License number if your state requires it], [Mailing address]

Keep the letter about the property they registered. Name the street. Quote the city's requirement in the city's words and only if you read it on the city's page. Do not tell the owner they are uninsured; you do not know that.

Follow-up email

Subject: Insurance check for your rental at [street]

[Owner name], I wrote to you last week about your short-term rental at [street]. If it is useful, I can compare your homeowners or landlord policy with what [City] asks for and what your booking platform covers, and send you a one-page summary. Reply to this email or book a time at [link].

This is an advertisement from [Agency], [physical postal address]. To stop receiving these emails, reply "stop" or use [unsubscribe link].

Phone opener

"Hi, this is [Name], a licensed agent with [Agency]. I'm calling about the short-term rental permit at [street]. I'll be quick: when you set up the rental, did you tell your insurance company the home takes paying guests? ... If you'd like, I can look at your policy and tell you what it says about guests and rental income. If you'd rather I not call again, I'll take your number off our list right now."

Offer the opt-out in the first minute and record it the same day. Call only numbers that passed your Do Not Call scrub within the last 31 days, by hand, within calling hours for the owner's location.

Second letter: the checklist

A letter that gives the owner something useful even if they never call tends to be kept. A checklist for a short-term rental owner might ask:

Does my policy name the property as a rental, or as my residence or second home?
Does it cover bodily injury to paying guests?
Does it cover lost rental income after a covered loss?
Does it cover my furniture and contents used by guests?
What does my booking platform's program cover, and for which bookings?
What limit does my city require, and can I produce a certificate within the deadline the city sets?
Do my condo association or homeowners association rules require anything?

Mistakes that waste a permit list

Mailing the property address of an absentee owner. The letter reaches a guest or a cleaner. Use the mailing address where the register has one; otherwise look up the owner on the county property record.
Sending one letter per permit to a big holder. A name on ten licenses should get one letter that mentions the portfolio, not ten identical letters.
Treating hotel-tax records as rentals. The Texas tax roll includes hotels and motels. Filter by business code first.
Quoting a requirement you have not read. City rules change. Quote the city's page, link it, and check it again before each campaign.
Calling unscrubbed mobile numbers. Permit phones are often personal. Scrub every 31 days and dial by hand.
Soliciting where you are not licensed. The owner's state and the property's state may both matter.
Counting expired permits as live rentals. Registers like Nashville's keep every expired permit. Filter by status.
Writing about short-term rental insurance in general. Owners respond to a letter about their own property and their own city's rule.

What the data costs, and the arithmetic

The cost of permit records is small next to the cost of reaching the owners. Using the dataset counts as of October 2026 and our published prices:

Louisiana, one-time state download, $149. 34,063 records, so about 0.44 cents a record; 29,350 have a phone or email, about 0.51 cents per contactable record.
Florida, one-time state download, $149. 53,152 records, about 0.28 cents a record; 39,708 contactable, about 0.38 cents each.
Kentucky, one-time state download, $149. 4,029 records, about 3.7 cents a record.
National, one-time download, $499. 283,611 records, about 0.17 cents a record; 127,924 contactable, about 0.39 cents each.

Your real cost is printing, postage and the time of a licensed person on the phone. Here is the arithmetic for a test, with your own unit costs filled in. Take the Kentucky file and keep only Lexington records that look active: suppose that leaves about 1,000 letters (an estimate; your filter will give the real number). At your print-and-postage cost per letter, the mailing costs 1,000 times that figure. If your agency has a known close rate from mailed leads in other lines, multiply it out before you commit, and adjust after the first batch. Nothing in the permit data predicts who will reply, so measure with a tracked phone number or a short URL per batch.

For a standing program, the weekly arithmetic is simpler. At roughly 700 new records a week nationally, an agency licensed in two or three states will see a slice of that each week. If your states are Florida and Louisiana, the October 12 to 18 week alone brought 198 new Florida license records and 31 new Louisiana records. That is a weekly batch a single person can mail and follow up.

Getting the records

PermitPulse is our dataset of short-term rental permit records, pulled from 64 public registers; the Florida license file is checked every four hours and the others daily. A state subscription is $99 a month (one state, up to 10,000 rows a month), and national is $299 a month (up to 50,000 rows). One-time downloads are $149 for a state and $499 national. You can take a free 25-row sample of any register after a free sign-up, which is enough to see the fields before you plan a mailing. The page for insurance agents shows which fields agencies use, and pricing has the details. Lodging registers (hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts) are not sold as short-term rental data.

If your agency wants the records delivered into its own CRM, filtered to its licensed states and matched against its existing book, custom lead-generation software builds start at $1,500.

Questions and answers

Do short-term rental owners need different insurance from a regular homeowners policy?

Often, yes. The NAIC says homeowners policies usually exclude or limit coverage for a business run in the home, that frequent rental may be treated as a home-based business, and that a paying guest who is injured might be excluded. State insurance departments, such as Mississippi's, say most homeowners and dwelling policies are not designed for accidents arising from short-term rentals. The owner should review the policy with a licensed agent.

Does Airbnb's AirCover replace short-term rental insurance?

Airbnb's pages describe $1 million of host liability insurance and up to $3 million of Host damage protection, available only on Airbnb. Airbnb states that Host damage protection is not insurance, and it excludes acts of nature, wear and tear and injury to guests or others. The liability part excludes intentional acts and some hosts. Nights booked on other channels are not Airbnb stays.

Which cities require proof of insurance for a short-term rental permit?

Among official pages we read in October 2026: Lexington, Kentucky ($1,000,000 per occurrence general liability), Norfolk, Virginia ($300,000 for administrative permits, $1,000,000 for conditional use permits), New Orleans (insurance meeting City Code Sec. 26-618(A)(1)), Green Bay, Wisconsin and Chattanooga, Tennessee (proof of insurance with the application). Arizona law lets cities require at least $500,000. Rules change, so check the city's page.

How do I find short-term rental owners in my area?

Find the public register that covers your city or county, filter it to active and pending permits, split it by permit type, group the records by owner name, and mail the owner's mailing address where the register publishes one. PermitPulse collects 64 such registers; the free STR permit lookup checks a single address.

Can I call or text the phone numbers on permit records?

Treat them as consumer numbers, because many are personal mobiles. The TCPA and the National Do Not Call Registry apply: scrub the registry at least every 31 days, dial by hand, call between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. at the owner's location, and do not use autodialers, prerecorded or AI-generated voices, or texts without consent. This is not legal advice.

Do I need an insurance license in the state where the rental property is?

Check with your compliance contact. The NAIC Producer Licensing Model Act, the template for state laws, says a person may not sell, solicit or negotiate insurance in a state without a license for that line of authority, and provides for nonresident licenses. Owners often live in a different state from the property, so check both.

When is the best time to contact a short-term rental owner about insurance?

Close to a permit filing or a renewal, when the owner is working through the city's checklist. About 700 records a week were new to the dataset over the 15 full weeks to October 18, 2026, and several programs renew on fixed cycles, such as Charleston's annual permit and Norfolk's two-year administrative permits.