Greenville's revitalized downtown, with Falls Park, Main Street, and a growing roster of attractions, has made it a destination, and short-term rentals have multiplied to serve the visitors who come.
When a guest is hurt at an Airbnb or vacation rental because of an unsafe condition, South Carolina premises law may allow a claim against the host, but these cases add a layer most premises claims do not: platform insurance and the question of which coverage applies.
The Arndt Law Firm represents guests injured at short-term rentals across Greenville and Greenville County. We can help you figure out who is responsible, deal with complex insurance policies, and pursue fair payment for your medical bills, lost wages, and other losses. Call us (843) 310-4645 for a free case review.
The host must exercise reasonable care for a guest's safety, and must warn of latent or hidden dangers the host knew about or should have known about. In practice, that means either showing the host created the condition, or showing the host had actual or constructive knowledge of it and did nothing, which is why what the host inspected and what the host was told between bookings is so often the center of the case.
A paying short-term rental guest is ordinarily treated as an invitee, the class owed the utmost duty of care under Sims v. Giles, because the guest is on the property for the host's financial benefit.
Hosts do argue the other way. South Carolina's Vacation Rental Act, S.C. Code § 27-50-210 and following, covers rentals of residential property for fewer than ninety days and calls the occupant a tenant. A host who leans on that will cite Young v. Morrisey for the older rule that a landlord owes no duty to maintain leased premises.
The answer usually turns on how much control the host maintained over the property, which is why the host's access, cleaning, maintenance, and inspection practices are worth documenting early on.
A host who rents a property to strangers is responsible for ensuring that the stairs are sound, the railings secure, the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors functional, the walkways clear, and any amenities like pools, hot tubs, decks, and grills are reasonably safe. A host cannot simply hand over the keys and disclaim responsibility for the property's condition; the duty to provide reasonably safe premises runs with the rental.
South Carolina courts do enforce liability waivers when the wording is clear and the guest agreed voluntarily, so a waiver in a rental agreement is not automatically meaningless. Because these clauses are disfavored and are read strictly against the party that wrote them, and because an overly broad release can be void as against public policy, the specific wording matters. Send us the rental agreement you accepted and we will tell you whether the release reaches what happened to you.
The host's duty is heightened by the nature of short-term rentals. Guests are unfamiliar with the property, do not know where hazards lie, and rely entirely on the host to have addressed them, which makes the host's duty to inspect and warn particularly important.
A loose step that a long-term resident would learn to avoid is a genuine danger to a guest who has never seen it, and the law accounts for that reliance in measuring what the host owed. This reliance runs counter to the defense that a guest should have noticed and avoided a hazard, since a guest arriving at an unfamiliar property and navigating rooms and stairs they have never seen is not in the same position as someone who knows the space.
This is why a host's duty to inspect before each guest arrives matters so much. Between rentals, a host has the opportunity and the responsibility to check that the property remains safe, to identify any hazards that have developed, and to address them or warn about them before a new guest, who has no way of knowing the property, takes occupancy.
A host who skips that inspection, or who knows of a hazard and rents the property anyway without warning the guest, has failed in exactly the duty the law imposes.
Greenville's emergence as a destination influences the short-term rental landscape and the injuries that arise within it. The revitalized downtown, anchored by Falls Park on the Reedy, the Liberty Bridge, Main Street, and the area's restaurants, events, and attractions, draws visitors year-round.
The growth of the metro generally has fueled demand for short-term rentals across the area. The guests who fill these rentals are often visitors unfamiliar with both the property and the area.
This visitor pattern adds a practical dimension to a short-term rental injury claim. Much of the rental traffic is out of town, drawn by Greenville's attractions or visiting the area for other reasons, and a visitor injured at a rental may return home, sometimes a considerable distance away, before addressing the claim.
A guest injured at a Greenville rental faces the same questions of host duty and platform coverage as any other short-term rental guest. This makes prompt documentation of the hazard and the injury especially important before the guest leaves the area, and the property is turned over to the next booking
The City of Greenville regulates short-term rentals through its Development Code: they are allowed by right only in the mixed-use and non-residential districts the code lists, and the operator needs a zoning permit, a business license, and must remit the city's 3 percent local accommodations tax each month.
The permit itself does not require a safety inspection, so it is not a guarantee that a property is safe. But a host operating without a permit, or in a district where short-term rentals are not allowed, is a fact worth establishing early.
Short-term rental injuries stem from a recognizable set of hazards, many of which are tied to the features that make these properties appealing. Falls are the most common, from defective or poorly lit stairs, slippery surfaces, uneven flooring, and unsecured rugs. A fall on a defective stairway can cause serious injury, particularly to a guest unfamiliar with the layout.
Water features and amenities are a frequent source of serious injuries. Swimming pools and hot tubs carry drowning and slip and fall risks, particularly when they lack required safeguards or are poorly maintained. Decks, balconies, and porches can fail when they are not properly built or maintained. Grills, fire pits, and outdoor features add burn and injury risks that a host is expected to manage.
Other hazards can also increase risks. Carbon monoxide from faulty heating systems or appliances is a hidden and potentially fatal danger when detectors are absent or non-functional.
Defective furniture, inadequate lighting, and unmarked hazards around the property can cause injuries to guests unfamiliar with the space. Negligent security can also be an issue in a rental where foreseeable criminal activity was not reasonably addressed.
Some of these hazards are governed by specific code provisions, and a violation is powerful evidence of negligence. Inside Greenville city limits, Section 6-764 of the City Code requires every outdoor pool holding more than eighteen inches of water to be completely surrounded by a fence at least four feet high, with self-latching gates kept locked whenever the pool is not in use, and Section 6-765 requires the pool to be registered.
In the unincorporated parts of Greenville County, Section 5-22(j) adopts the 2021 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code in full, which requires a 48-inch barrier.
Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are governed by Sections R314 and R315 of the 2021 South Carolina Residential Code, which took effect on January 1, 2023. An unfenced pool or a missing carbon monoxide alarm at a rental is not merely unreasonable; it is a code violation.
What sets short-term rental injury claims apart from ordinary premises cases is the platform insurance that may apply. Airbnb provides host liability coverage, part of its AirCover for Hosts program, that offers up to one million dollars in coverage when a host is found legally responsible for a guest's injury during a stay booked on the platform.
Airbnb includes this coverage by default and at no cost to the host, but it is not unconditional. Hosts can opt out of the program, and it does not extend to stays booked through Airbnb Travel LLC or to Experiences or Services. One of the first steps in a short-term rental claim is to confirm that the coverage was actually in force for the booking, rather than assume that it was.
Airbnb's host liability insurance carries a limit of $1,000,000 in total per Airbnb stay, not per injured person. When several members of one family are hurt in the same stay, which is what a carbon monoxide event usually looks like, that single limit is shared among all of them.
Airbnb's coverage is also no longer straightforwardly primary for every host: since March 1, 2025, for a host with six or more active listings, the program may require a contribution from other insurance or be applied as excess. Vrbo's program is written differently, at up to $1,000,000 per occurrence per rental agreement, with $5,000 in medical payments and a 25 percent deductible if the owner carries no adequate policy of their own.
The coverage generally applies only to stays booked through the platform, not to direct bookings arranged outside it, and applies only during the booking period, not before or after.
Airbnb's host liability policy also carries roughly twenty named exclusions, and two of them matter enormously in a negligent security case: assault and battery, and sexual assault are both expressly excluded.
That does not defeat the claim against the host, whose duty under Bass v. Gopal to take reasonable action against foreseeable criminal harm is a matter of South Carolina common law, but it does mean the platform's million dollars is not the policy that answers for it. In an assault case, the host's own liability policy, the property manager's coverage, and any premises owner's coverage are the coverage that matters.
The claim is not handled by Airbnb itself. Airbnb takes in the report and routes it to the carrier that actually writes the coverage, most often Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. or Illinois Union Insurance Company in the United States, and that carrier assigns the adjuster who evaluates and pays.
Vrbo's program runs through Generali U.S. Branch. Knowing which carrier is at risk, rather than treating the platform as the decision-maker, allows the claim to be presented to the party with authority to pay it.
Beyond the platform coverage, the host may carry other insurance. Many hosts hold short-term rental policies or homeowner's coverage, though standard homeowner's policies often exclude short-term rental activity, which can create disputes about whether the host's personal insurance responds.
A serious injury can exceed the platform's coverage limit, leaving a gap that the host's own insurance, or another responsible party's, must fill. This coordination of multiple coverage sources is one of the features that most distinguishes an Airbnb injury claim from an ordinary premises case, where a single commercial policy is usually the whole picture.
It’s important to understand how these layers fit together, and pursuing each one prevents an injured guest from being limited to whatever the platform chooses to offer.
Recoverable damages in a short-term rental case include medical expenses, lost income, future care, and pain and suffering. When the host's conduct was more than careless, for example, renting a property with a carbon monoxide alarm the host knew was dead, punitive damages may also be available.
South Carolina requires clear and convincing evidence for punitive damages under S.C. Code § 15-32-520, and S.C. Code § 15-32-530 caps them at the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000, with the cap lifted where the defendant was intoxicated, committed a felony, or acted with intent to harm.
South Carolina's modified comparative negligence rule applies to short-term rental injury claims, allowing recovery as long as the injured guest was 50 percent or less at fault, reducing the recovery by their percentage, and barring it at 51 percent or more. The rule comes from Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., 303 S.C. 243, 399 S.E.2d 783 (1991). The host's insurer will look for any basis to assign fault to the guest, such as arguing the guest misused an amenity or ignored an obvious hazard.
As in any premises liability case, the open-and-obvious defense is common, with the insurer arguing the guest should have seen and avoided the hazard. South Carolina courts consider whether a condition was open and obvious, but visibility does not automatically defeat the claim, particularly when the host created the hazard or the layout made avoidance impractical.
A guest unfamiliar with the property is in a different position than someone who knows the space, which bears on what the guest could reasonably have been expected to notice.
Because a partial fault reduces the recovery and a majority fault defeats it, establishing the host's failure while minimizing any share attributed to the guest is central to the case. The guest's unfamiliarity with the property, the host's duty to warn of hazards, and the specific condition that caused the injury all bear on the fault analysis, and developing those facts is what protects the recovery from an inflated fault assignment.
Dog attacks at a rental follow a different rule. Under S.C. Code § 47-3-110, the dog's owner, or whoever had the dog in their care or keeping, is strictly liable when a person is bitten or otherwise attacked while lawfully present, which includes a guest on the rental property by invitation.
There is no requirement to show the dog had bitten before, and South Carolina has no one-bite rule. Comparative negligence does not appear in the statute at all. The only fault-based defense is that the injured person provoked or harassed the dog, and that provocation was the proximate cause of the attack; that is a complete defense rather than a reduction.
The host is the primary defendant in most short-term rental injury claims, as the party responsible for the condition of the property and for meeting the duty owed to guests. But the host is not always the only responsible party.
When the property is managed by a property management company, that company may share responsibility for maintenance and safety depending on its role. Other parties can bear responsibility depending on the circumstances.
A contractor whose defective work created the hazard, such as a badly built deck or faulty wiring, can be liable, but South Carolina places an outside limit on those claims: under S.C. Code § 15-3-640, no action arising out of the defective condition of an improvement to real property may be brought more than eight years after the work was substantially completed, even if the injury happens later.
That limit does not apply to the manufacturer of a defective product, such as a heater or a space heater, so establishing when the work was done, and by whom, is an early priority. When the rental is part of a larger building or community, the entity responsible for common areas may be a defendant when the injury occurred in a shared space.
These relationships have to be sorted out to determine which insurance is available. A serious injury at a short-term rental can exceed the platform's coverage, and identifying every responsible party and every applicable policy is what allows the claim to reach the full coverage the injury requires.
The investigation that maps the host, any management company, contractors, and the relevant insurance is the foundation of a complete claim, and it is often what separates a recovery that addresses the full harm from one limited to the first source at hand.
You have three years from the injury to file a claim under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5). If a governmental entity is involved, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act applies, and the deadline is shorter.
Suit must be brought within two years of when the loss was or should have been discovered, or within three years if a verified claim was first filed with the entity, which must itself be done within one year of discovery. Damages against a governmental entity are capped at $300,000 per person and $600,000 per occurrence, and punitive damages are not available.
If a guest dies from an injury at a short-term rental, whether from carbon monoxide, a drowning, or a fall, the claim is a wrongful death action brought by the personal representative of the estate. The filing deadline is three years under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(6), and it runs from the date of death rather than from the date of the incident or the date the cause was discovered.
Different rules also apply when the injured guest is a child. Under S.C. Code § 15-3-40, the time a minor spends under that disability generally does not count against the limitation period, so a child's claim is not measured the same way as an adult's is. The exact computation is contested in South Carolina, so a parent should not assume a claim is gone; have the deadline checked by a lawyer rather than calculated from the date of the injury.
The steps a guest takes after an injury at a short-term rental can determine whether a claim succeeds, and some are specific to the rental setting. The first priority is medical care, both for health and to document the injury at its origin, which matters especially for a visitor who may be far from home and tempted to delay treatment until returning.
Getting evaluated at a Greenville-area facility creates the medical record that the claim depends on and protects against an argument that the injury was minor. Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital is the region's main trauma facility, and a guest hurt at a rental in the city should be evaluated there or at a nearby urgent care before leaving the area.
Documentation is urgent in these cases. If you are able, photograph the hazard, the surrounding area, the lighting, and any missing safety features, such as detectors or railings, before anything is changed, because the host may repair or alter the condition before the next guest arrives.
Report the injury to the host and through the booking platform, which creates a dated record and preserves the booking information that bears on which insurance applies. Note the names and contact information of anyone who witnessed the incident, including other guests.
In the days that follow, preserve the digital trail and be careful about communications. Keep the reservation confirmation, the listing as it appeared when you booked, and any messages with the host, all of which can establish the host's representations and what they knew.
Avoid giving a recorded statement to the host's insurer or the platform's representatives before understanding your rights, and keep a file of medical records and expenses. Because the property and its online listing can change quickly, and because an out-of-town guest may soon be far from the area, seeking advice early helps preserve evidence before it is altered or removed.
| Coverage source | When it may apply | Notes |
| Platform host liability (e.g., AirCover) | Injury during a platform-booked stay where host is liable | Up to $1M; excludes intentional harm; platform administers |
| Host's STR or homeowner's policy | Depends on policy terms and rental activity | Standard homeowner's policies often exclude short-term rentals |
| Property manager's coverage | When a management company shared responsibility | Depends on the manager's role and contract |
| Contractor or manufacturer coverage | When defective work or a product caused the hazard | Adds another potential source of recovery |
Yes, if an unsafe condition caused your injury and the host failed in the duty to keep the property reasonably safe. A paying guest is generally owed the highest duty of care.
Airbnb's host liability coverage can provide up to one million dollars when the host is found legally responsible for a guest's injury during a platform-booked stay, subject to its terms and exclusions.
Platform coverage generally applies only to bookings made through the platform, so a direct booking may fall outside it, making the host's own insurance the relevant source.
A short-term rental injury suit arising in Greenville is filed in the Court of Common Pleas for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in Greenville County. Where a case belongs in federal court, the Greenville Division of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina sits at the Carroll A. Campbell, Jr. United States Courthouse at 250 East North Street.
Yes, as long as you were 50 percent or less at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage, and barred at 51 percent or more.
At The Arndt Law Firm, the first thing we do is help establish the host's legal duty under South Carolina premises liability law. Hosts have to keep their property reasonably safe for guests, just like any other property owner. Then we move quickly to document the hazard that caused your injury because a short-term rental doesn't sit empty for long. The next guest checks in, and that broken step or faulty railing can get fixed or covered up before anyone else sees it.
We also dig into every possible source of coverage. That might include Airbnb's own host liability insurance, the host's personal or landlord policy, and, if a property management company is involved, their insurance too.
Attorney Arndt spent years on the other side of these cases, defending insurance companies, so he knows how they evaluate and push back on claims. That experience shapes how we build yours from the start, with the goal of securing every dollar of coverage your injury actually warrants.
If this happened to you in Greenville or anywhere in Greenville County, don't wait to get help. The booking records, photos, and physical evidence that prove what happened are easiest to gather right after the injury, and they disappear fast once the property goes back into rotation.
The consultation is free, and we handle short-term rental injury cases on contingency, meaning you owe nothing unless we win. Reach out today and tell us what happened.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Jonathan S. Arndt, licensed in South Carolina since 2018.
Content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed South Carolina attorney for guidance specific to your situation.
