I'm listed with a location company based in Los Angeles and have also rented my house out for still photography shoots on my own. I set aside the money in a home improvements/repair fund.

If I had a store, I would totally rent it out to Law & Order. If only, to see my store in one of those scenes where a witness is too friggin' busy folding sweaters to answer police questions about A MURDER!

I've been on sets where houses are used. The houses and grounds can really take a beating. Walls get dinged, slipcovers get torn, things get knocked off the walls, everything gets moved, trash gets left everywhere. The crew tries to return it to the original state but you definitely won't get the house back the way you left it. I like my place, so I'm not sure that I'd subject it to that kind of abuse.

If you decide to use your property for tv , film etc. make sure they have a large insurance policy and list you as additionaly insured.
Shit happens,

Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller's house was used in a movie a few years ago -- they wrote about the experience here:

http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=253/

http://blog.pentagram.com/2007/08/home-invasion-1.php

It's pretty crazy how different the set decorator made their house look!

Greenish and cityof paris are right on the money.

Friends of mine who are set designers warned me of this before I signed up with the location company which is why I specified my house as a location for still photography only. Even with large insurance policies, the additional money just isn't worth the aggrivation.

My coop on Thompson and Prince rented to a film with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. Oops! The amount of money paid for the location fee did not really cover the additional taxes the coop had to pay for violating something called the 80/20 tax rule. (only 20% of a coops' income can come from sources other than shareholder maintenance)

The one person who rented the INSIDE of her apartment made out ok, though.

My parent rented the outside of our house, and the inside of our garage for a movie when I was in elementary school. It was for this film...http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105217/
Spooky!

Greenish makes a good point.

My experience has been with working on HGTV shoots - in which we were showing off the home as the homeowners see it, live in it, decorate it.

I was really surprised during one of my preliminary phone calls when one man asked - or requested, more accurately that he really hoped our crew would respect his house as he and his family do. He mentioned past experiences with production companies, citing damage, blocking streets in the neighborhood with big trucks, tearing up the lawn, scraping the floors.

I explained that for the HGTV shoots I was involved in... it was just me (the field producer) and a photographer... and I assure you, by the end of the day we are as in love with your house as you are!!! We rent a minivan at the airport! No big crew.

Prior to that it had never occured to me that there were crews out there that might treat someone's home like a piece of meat!

Crews do not treat someone's home as a piece of meat. That is an irresponsible portrayal coming from someone proclaiming to be a producer. I actually work on features. Location Managers are on hand to protect the home while we are shooting. If there is damage they work tirelessly to return the home to the original condition. Our industry depends on being able to return to a location in case of reshoots. It doesn't behoove us burn any bridges with homeowners.