Found Damage After Checkout? What a Co-Host Should Send the Owner

You are the one who found it: the cigarette burn on the worktop, the cracked TV, the stain that will not lift. But on most short-term rentals, you are not the one who can claim it back. The owner holds the account, and the owner files with AirCover. What you send them in the next few hours decides whether the cost is recovered or quietly absorbed.

A quick text starts a slow conversation

The instinct is to fire off a one-line message: guest broke the coffee table, what do you want to do? It feels fast, but it is the slow option. The owner now has to ask what it will cost, whether it is worth filing, what evidence exists, and how long they have. Every round trip burns hours, and the filing clock is already running. A complete report answers all of those questions before they are asked.

What the owner actually needs from you

Five things turn a found problem into a claim the owner can file:

• The stay: the property, the guest name, the reservation code, and the checkout date.
• The damage: each item, the room it is in, and how bad it is.
• The cost: a realistic figure per item, ideally a quote or receipt, otherwise a typical range.
• The evidence: which photos you took, and whether you have a receipt or a quote.
• The deadline: how many days are left to file.

Put those on one page and the owner can act instead of interview you. That single page is an incident report, and it is the difference between a recovered cost and a lost one.

Send it the same day

AirCover gives the owner 14 days from checkout, or until the next guest checks in, whichever comes first. The window opens the moment the guest leaves, not the moment you report. A report that lands on day five has already cost the owner five days, and a same-day turnover can shrink the whole window to a few hours. Treat the report as part of the turnover, not an afterthought. The 14-day filing window explains how the clock works and why tight turnarounds make it shorter than it looks.

You do not have to write it from scratch

Re-typing all five parts for every incident is exactly the kind of work that gets skipped when you are busy. The free VA Incident Report Builder assembles them for you: you answer a few questions about the stay and the damage, and it produces the report with a sourced cost range, an evidence-readiness checklist, and the filing-window countdown already worked out. You can send it to the owner as a link, a PDF, or straight to their inbox, with privacy toggles for the money figures and personal details. The tool guide walks through how it works.

After you send it

The owner files in the Resolution Center, inside the window, and attaches the photos, receipts, and quotes. Before they file, it is worth running the case through the AirCover Claim Strength Checker to see what is still missing and fix it first. Keep your own copy of the report too: a dated record of what you found and when you flagged it protects you as much as it helps the owner. For the full workflow, from the turnover inspection to the claim, see the co-host and VA guide to guest damage.