Cleaner Broke Something in Your Airbnb? Who Pays

Not legal advice. This is an operations guide, not a substitute for a lawyer. Rules on wage deductions, worker classification and liability vary by state, so have an attorney look over your pay policy and cleaner agreements before you rely on them.

What to do when a cleaner reports a breakage

It usually shows up as a message in the middle of a turnover: a cracked glass tabletop, a chipped sink, a lamp that went over with the vacuum cord. Leave the money question for later and start here.

1. Thank them for telling you. If cleaners get docked or blamed every time they report something, they stop reporting, and your next guest finds it instead. Our guide to getting cleaners to report damage has more on keeping reports coming.
2. Figure out whether it broke before or during the clean. The cleaner walks in right after the guest walks out, so it could be either. The only reliable way to tell is a photo of each room as the cleaner found it, taken before they start. If the damage is in that photo, it happened before the clean, and the last guest is the first place to look. If the room looks fine in the as-found photo and broken in the finished ones, it happened during the clean.
3. Document it. Close-ups, one wide shot that shows where it is, and the cleaner’s account in their own words, all on the same day.
4. Get the unit ready for the next guest. Clear anything sharp or unsafe, swap in a spare if you have one, and decide whether to repair or replace before check-in. Who pays can wait until the guest is in.
5. Work out who pays. That depends on who the cleaner is, and it’s what the rest of this page covers.

Get the as-found photo even if you trust your crew completely. Without it you can’t honestly say who broke what, and a guest claim you could have filed never gets filed. With back-to-back stays, the same photos also show you which guest caused the damage.

Who pays depends on who the cleaner is

We’re assuming you already know whether your cleaners are employees or contractors. If you’re not sure, our 1099 vs W-2 guide walks through it. Whatever the paperwork says doesn’t settle it on its own.

If the cleaner is your employee

The federal limit comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Federal regulations (ecfr.gov) say wages have to be paid “finally and unconditionally or ‘free and clear,’” and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (dol.gov) lists “damages to the employer’s property by the employee” as a cost that’s for the employer’s benefit. You can’t make an employee pay for that if it drops their wages below minimum wage or eats into overtime.

Carelessness doesn’t change this. The Department says so plainly: “This is true even if an economic loss suffered by the employer is due to the employee’s negligence.” And asking them to pay you back in cash instead of docking their check doesn’t get around it either. The Department covers that too.

Federal law is the minimum, and some states go a lot further. California is the clearest example. The California Labor Commissioner’s Office (dir.ca.gov) says an employer “cannot legally make such a deduction” when something breaks “by reason of mistake or accident,” and notes that California courts treat losses from simple negligence as a cost of doing business the employer has to bear. Its own example is an employee who accidentally drops a tray of dishes. The employer can’t take that loss out of their paycheck.

California’s wage orders do carve out losses caused by a dishonest or willful act or gross negligence. But the employer has to prove it, and “a simple accusation does not give the employer the right to make the deduction.” The Labor Commissioner also warns that even this exception may not hold up under the Labor Code.

Other states have their own rules, so check with your state labor department before you take anything out of someone’s pay. Wherever you are, the practical answer for an employed crew ends up about the same. Accidental breakage is part of what it costs to run the homes. If one person keeps breaking things, treat it as a performance problem and leave their paycheck out of it.

If the cleaner is a 1099 contractor

A real independent contractor bills you. They don’t get a paycheck from you, so wage deduction rules aren’t the tool here. A contractor who breaks something through carelessness can owe you for it even if your agreement never mentions damage. A damage clause just makes it much easier, because everyone already knows what happens next. Without one, you’re negotiating after the fact, and short-paying their invoice on your own is a quick way to turn a broken lamp into a fight with someone you need back on Saturday.

One catch. If the cleaner would really count as your employee under federal or state law, calling them a 1099 doesn’t change anything. Docking them is still a wage deduction, and the rules above apply.

Then there’s their insurance. The District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (disb.dc.gov) describes commercial general liability as coverage for “property damage caused by your business operations.” That’s the policy that should pay for a broken sink. Check that it’s current, and ask whether it has a care, custody or control exclusion. ERGO NEXT Insurance (nextinsurance.com) sums up what that exclusion means: “If you damage an item you’re taking care of, but don’t own, your insurance might not cover the costs.”

If their policy has that exclusion, ask whether they also carry bailee’s customers insurance. The DC department describes it as covering damage to someone else’s property “while under the care of a bailee,” and its example of a bailee is a cleaning or janitorial service. Either way, it’s worth asking the cleaner’s agent directly how their coverage handles damage to a client’s furniture during a clean. Our guide to insurance for turnover inspectors shows how to check a certificate of insurance. The same steps work for cleaners; just skip the errors and omissions part.

If you hire a cleaning company

When a cleaning company sends the crew, whoever broke the lamp works for them. There’s nothing for you to deduct. Send the company the photos, the cleaner’s account and the repair quote, and they handle it under your service agreement and their general liability policy.

Being “bonded” is something else. Plenty of cleaning companies advertise it, but a janitorial bond is about theft. The DC insurance department describes these bonds as protecting clients “if one or more employees steal from your company or the property where they are working.” That’s worth having, but it won’t pay for a cracked tabletop, so ask for their general liability certificate as well.

If the home belongs to an owner you manage for

If you’re a property manager, the thing that broke probably belongs to an owner, and they’ll want to know who did it. Check what your management agreement says about damage caused by your staff or vendors. Then tell the owner what happened and how it’s being paid for, and keep the photos and repair invoice with your report. Our guide on telling an owner their property was damaged covers what to put in that report.

Why you can’t file it with AirCover

When the cleaner shows up minutes after checkout, it’s tempting to put the damage through Airbnb. Airbnb’s own wording rules that out. Its help center (airbnb.com) says Host damage protection “covers you if a guest damages your place or belongings during an Airbnb stay.” The damage protection terms, last updated August 1, 2026, are even narrower. Eligible losses are physical loss or damage “directly caused by the Responsible Guest or an Invitee,” and an Invitee is “a person invited to be present at an Eligible Accommodation by a Responsible Guest.” Your cleaner is neither.

The terms also make paying for damage the guest’s responsibility first, with Airbnb only backing that up. A guest can’t owe you for something your crew broke after they left. Section 9 says a host “must not have misrepresented any facts” in a payment request. If a host does, Airbnb denies all their pending requests and ends the protection for them, and where it finds fraud, it says it can claw back what it paid and pass details to law enforcement. No repair bill is worth that.

If the as-found photo shows the guest really did break it, that’s a legitimate claim, and you don’t have long to file it. Our AirCover claim guide walks through the process. For what Airbnb and the third-party damage programs do and don’t cover, see our AirCover vs Proper vs Safely comparison. If nobody else is going to pay, your own policy is the backstop. What your STR policy actually covers explains how to check, and for a small breakage, see first whether it’s even above your deductible.

The damage clause your cleaner agreement is missing

Our checklist of what to put in a cleaner service agreement covers eleven clauses, including how fast damage has to be reported. It doesn’t say who pays once it is. That’s far easier to agree on before anything breaks. For contractors and cleaning companies, the clause should cover:

• As-found photos. The cleaner photographs each room on arrival, before starting, and uploads the photos with the turnover. This protects the cleaner from being blamed for guest damage just as much as it protects you.
• Reporting before leaving. Anything broken during the clean gets reported, with photos, before the cleaner leaves the property.
• What the cleaner pays. Whether the contractor or company pays to repair or replace what they damage, and how it gets settled: an invoice, a credit against the next payment, or an insurance claim above a set amount.
• Insurance minimums. General liability with limits high enough to cover the most expensive things in your homes, bailee’s customers coverage if their liability policy excludes property in their care, a current certificate on file, and a renewal date you actually track.
• Accidents vs. deliberate damage. Dropping a glass and breaking something on purpose are different things. Spell out how each is handled so ordinary accidents don’t turn into fights.

For employees, this goes in a written pay policy instead of a contract, and it usually says the opposite: report accidental breakage, and nothing comes out of your pay. Between the federal rules and states like California, that’s often what the law requires anyway. Putting it in writing also keeps people reporting.

Quick FAQ