How to Rent out Gear and what insurance

[rkrone]

I'm not sure where to ask this, and have a few general rental questions:

I do some video stuff, but not a full time business.
I have enough for a basic setup (HMC-150, Manfrotto, Sennheiser wireless) and I am interested in renting it out. (More often I am not using it)
There seems to be some need for it, I am in Chicago, where it is not a huge video marketplace (compared to NY/Cali)

Here are the questions:
What type of insurance is available for the rental owner and how much would it cost?
I have looked up some general sites for this, but would this be considered Rental House?
The thing is, I am not a large business, and I don't need $100k insurance, I just need something to cover it the gear is broke or lost/stolen since I won't be with it.
Is it possible for an individual to get this insurance? I don't think general insurance covers this if the gear is being rented out for profit.
If not, setting up a small LLC and getting insurance makes sense?

Thanks for advice!

[rkrone]

has anyone gone this route to rent their gear??

[Grug]

Equipment rental generally works on the proviso that the productions renting the gear out, have production insurance to cover any damage/theft to the gear. If they don't have insurance, don't rent your gear to them.

You can get insurance that will cover the cost of damage to your gear whilst being rented (generally with a higher excess), but they almost never cover theft - so you need to confirm that the production has insurance (and that they have enough to cover the full replacement cost of your gear).

If a production doesn't have insurance to cover rental gear, then I'd only ever suggest considering wet hire to them (i.e. where you go out on set with the gear, generally in a crew capacity).

If you're going to do it though, there's several things you're going to want to do:

- form a formal company
- pull together or have a lawyer write up a proper rental agreement to dictate the terms of your equipment being hired
- get insurance that covers you properly (this isn't cheap, I'm paying $2,700pa for $60k of gear and liability insurance - and that was a bargain compared to most quotes I got).

Good luck with it.

[paulears]

here in the UK it is virtually impossible for you to get insurance to hire out your own kit when you are not using it, because the entire reason you need it is that the risk is too real to do without. The insurance actuaries consider this unacceptable. They rely on hire companies to to many hires with just a few claims. With self-hire, the quantity of of hires is less, and as a result - the risk is much, much higher. So if you want 365 day a year insurance for your kit being hired, it's possible, but if you want as and when insurance, it's a bad deal for them.

[Grug]

Are you sure Paul? My whole equipment insurance (including dry hire) is underwritten through a specific policy with Lloyds of London.

[rkrone]

so, you are saying that because it would only be rented out rarely (compared to daily) that it would cost more to insure because the chance of a claim is higher?