Ready to transform your Furnished Finder listing into a traveler’s dream? Join us for an in-depth tutorial on how to set up your first—or next—property listing, complete with insider advice you won’t find anywhere else. Kelly and Katie dive deep into key questions like: How do I price my mid-term rental? Should you invest in a full kitchen or stick with a kitchenette? What fees and amenities matter most to tenants?
In this episode, we cover everything from writing a killer headline to selecting must-have amenities and pricing strategies that ensure profitability. You’ll also learn why being pet-friendly gives you a competitive edge, how to stand out with your photos, and which Furnished Finder features (like real-time notifications and calendar best practices) are essential for success.
If you’re looking to attract more tenants, maximize bookings, and boost your rental income, this guide has everything you need to stay ahead of the competition.
Key Takeaways:
🔑 1:30 Adding your first or next listing on Furnished Finder
🔑 2:25 The power of your headline: Keywords that attract travelers
🔑 6:25 The perks of being pet-friendly
🔑 9:15 Three steps to price your mid-term rental successfully
🔑 11:40 Standard property fees for mid-term rentals
🔑 13:45 Do you need a washer/dryer and full kitchen?
🔑 18:45 How to create standout listing photos
🔑 22:10 Furnished Finder calendar tips
🔑 24:25 Managing notifications for tenant leads and housing requests
🔑 25:45 Setting clear house rules for tenant success
🎯 Pro Tip: Optimize your listing by using search-friendly amenities, such as high-speed internet, king-size beds, and in-unit laundry. Plus, learn how thoughtful touches like starter essentials can earn you 5-star reviews from day one.
Episode 127 Transcript
Welcome to the Landlord Diaries, where we talk about midterm rentals and the opportunities behind them. We'll share landlord stories, talk about maximizing investment potential, and discuss how to live the very best landlord life. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Furnished Finder. The leader and largest online marketplace for midterm rentals.
Remember to like, and subscribe if you enjoy our content. Welcome back to the Landlord Diaries podcast. It's Kelly Bailey and Katie Lyon coming to you from the Furnished Finder marketing team. We are midterm rental investors ourselves with anywhere between the two of us around eight to 14 listings. Uh, so we know how to use Furnished Finder well, and we are going to give you some Insider tips today.
We have a new listing tutorial. Uh, this is going to be a supplement to that. It's a well designed video that walks you through how to set up a listing on Furnished Finder. But Katie and I today are going to add additional context and give insider advice on what some midterm rental suggestions would be for each section of that application.
Add a new listing to Furnished Finder. Uh, some examples would be, how do I price my midterm rental? Do I need a full kitchen or is a kitchenette okay? What are standard property fees for a midterm rental? So we're going to do a deep dive on that today and let's jump in. Katie, why don't you get us started?
So first things first, getting started to list your property. If this is your first time listing a property, it's really simple. It's going to be in the top right corner of your furnished finder, um, homepage. It's going to say, list your property in big, bold letters. So we make sure that you can get straight there.
If you are adding a second, third, fourth property, go into your dashboard, into your properties, and then you will see the option to add another property. So we try to kind of put it where your other properties are already living. And if you would like help setting up your Your new listing or your first listing.
We have agents that are specifically dedicated to what we call listing setup service. And these guys are like the experts at setting up listings. They do it so well. So if you're just like, you know what, I want someone else to handle this for me, go ahead. You can reach out to them. We will put the contact information in the show notes here, and then they can do that for you for a small fee.
Yeah, definitely. Uh, one of the first things you're going to come across is the headline, which is a super important part of your listing because it sums it up in a few key words of why someone should choose your property over someone else's property. So some things that you can get detailed on to make sure that your property stands out and highlights its important amenities is Do you have a washer dryer in an apartment complex?
That's a great one to, to highlight. If you have king beds, that is a search filter on Furnished Finder. Uh, definitely highlight those king beds. Do you have high speed internet and work from home setups? Is the area quiet, safe, spacious? Are you close to any attractions that they could walk to or short drive such as hospitals, local parks?
Projects, great restaurants, downtown areas, things like that. So try to sum that up in your headline. Katie, as our marketing director of Furnished Finder, do you want to give an example of one of your favorite headlines? Sure. I don't know specific examples, but I do think you guys, this is like what shows up under your property photo on the search results page.
So when travelers are searching and then they're scrolling down, like this is like your five, six, 10 words to really grab someone's attention. So if you are going for that traveling medical professional, you could say, you know, one bedroom apartment. Great for travel nurses. If you are, have a larger property and your target tenant is more of the displaced family or the relocating family, you can say, you know, four bed home with yard.
Great for families, like put it out there. Be very clear. Our midterm travelers are much more practical than they are looking for like. The thrills and frills of a short term rental. So you don't need to use all of these like marketing me words, right? You don't need to say it's cute or it's quaint or it's, I don't know, like, like you don't need to say all of these kinds of words that you might see on other sites.
You're going to want to keep it very practical, very realistic, make yourself stand out with quality. And one last tip for the same page that the headline is on, which is the first page you fill out on your add a listing process, is there's a section there for your phone number and an option to hide your phone number if you want.
We do not recommend that. Our stats show Almost 40 percent of shopper behavior is to click that reveal the phone number. So if you want to stay competitive in your market, it's best to have a phone number available on your listing. All right, so let's jump into our next tip. Our next tip for maximizing your listing potential is to really be thoughtful about adding the five facilities or attractions when you're at the location step of your, um, listing.
So this is, you can add. Anything on the map, but what you're going to add is, is things that would be relevant for the type of tenant that you are looking to house. So if it is those medical professionals, you can put the closest hospitals or medical facilities. If it is a corporate traveler, we have so many corporate travelers.
Maybe it's downtown, or maybe it's a large, like the hub of Dell or Google or something like that. Put some thought into this. Spend some time researching the exact distance because this allows travelers to very, very quickly say, Oh, okay, if I stay at this property, I'm going to be, you know, four miles from work.
I'm going to be two miles to work. And that's going to fill in a lot of those blanks. and lead you to really high quality leads. Colleges and lakes, things like that are also great to add to this section. And it is a pretty prominent section. If you go to your property details page, it's a pretty prominent section that shows what attractions are close by.
Uh, so always spot check your listing after you're done with the edit listing process to make sure it looks good and is flowing the way that you want it to flow. So we're walking you through our top. 10 secret insider tips in the order that you would be getting to these steps, steps on your listing. So the next one is you have the option.
Do you want to be pet friendly or do you not want to be prep friendly? This is, uh, one of those that the stats show. If you want to stay competitive in your market, it's good to be pet friendly because almost 30 to 40 percent of travelers bring their fur companions along. I've had. I've had cats. I've had dogs.
Uh, there's, I've heard of a horse staying at a Furnished Finder. So there's a lot of reasons that people, uh, travel. And I even had a inquiry for a bunny. I would have loved to have a bunny in my home, but it didn't work out for that specific say. The thing to keep in mind with this, if you check yes to being pet friendly, that doesn't mean that you have to say yes to the tenant that's traveling with a pet.
It just means. Uh, apply fair, safe housing, know your local laws and have conversations with those that are wanting to book your property so that you can let them know, Hey, we are pet friendly. Uh, how, you know, what is the life of your pet look like, uh, and make sure both travelers and landlords on Furnished Finder can make sure it's a good fit for them.
So that's why we want you to have those conversations through text or phone or Furnished Finder messaging before you book the property. Guys, you can also implement rules with pets, right? You can have, you know, specific rules about making sure they're on leash or how to handle pet waste or where they're allowed and not allowed.
Like this is up to you to kind of set those standards. Worry free waiver. Our new product is, is fantastic for property owners that allow pets. I know we have implemented it. We do everything we can to be pet friendly. And we, my, me personally, we have had. Little to no damage from pets. Like we've had sometimes where our cleaner has to stay longer because there's pet hair in places, but that real permanent damage when you think to yourself, Oh my gosh, I'm going to walk in and all the legs to the chairs are going to be chewed off and there's going to be pet urine everywhere and everything.
It hasn't happened to me. We have great professional tenants and they're not, that's not what they're aiming to do. Um, but worry free waiver or ours or our, um, damage free protection will cover you for those pet damages. So it's a huge added benefit. If you can be pet friendly to add in that damage waiver.
One hundred percent and this can apply to things like smoking as well. You could say that your property is You know allow smoking, but you could get detailed with your rules of where that smoking is allowed Giving you that competitive advantage as well and being upfront with your guests. So the next one is how to And Katie and I talk about this a lot on the Landlord Diaries channel.
Uh, but there's three main things that we recommend. We, we recommend that you start on Furnished Finder. com forge slash stats. That gives you a broad picture of your area and what, uh, bedrooms are renting for, what rooms are renting for, entire spaces, et cetera. And it's in a nice, pretty, uh, Pie chart that's easy to read.
So that's what we recommend starting with. And then your next step is to flip over to the furnished finder map and zoom into your area. You want to see, uh, who your competitors are. What advantages do you have that maybe they don't have? How does your, how do your photos compare to their photos? And you can use that as a target for pricing your listing.
What's their square footage versus your square footage, number of bedrooms, et cetera. Uh, and then. But overall in the industry, kind of what we hear, uh, on our show is you're aiming for one and a half to two times the rent of a long term rental with a midterm rental. In some cases, especially with insurance days, you can see up to four times the rent, but that's what most of us are aiming for is one and a half to two times the rent of a long term rental.
Yeah. Guys, spend some time on the map here. Just like look in your market and see what. Comparable properties are renting for. Um, I was actually talking to a friend the other day, who's in the, in the middle of listing her very first furnished finder. And she was like, I don't know where to start with the pricing.
And I'm like, let's go back to basics, right? If you were to come up with a brand new brand or a brand new. Um, shampoo, where would you start? You'd start with saying, what are other shampoos priced for? Right? Same, like, like go and see what's in your market and what they're priced like. And then like Kelly said, do you have more amenities?
Do you have less amenities? Do you have more space? Less space as your property more conveniently located or less. And you can change these things as much as you want. That's the other thing I don't want anybody to forget is it's not like you have to pick one price and that is tattooed on your forehead forever, right?
You can change that and you can adjust it as much as you want. You're still never going to have those booking fees or commissions taken out. So just know that like you truly have control over that. Property fees is another one that people get to, and they just think. Well, I'll just keep it similar to what my long term rentals were.
But this is the midterm rental industry and it's not the same. So same thing, you can flip over the map and go check out the property fees section, uh, of a listing for each of those competitors in your market. But kind of some standards that we see is with, uh, Furnished Finder provides all the tools you need to book a midterm rental stay.
We're not a booking platform. We're a connection. So we want to make sure you have everything you need to successfully book a midterm rental stay. And so through our sister company, key check, and you'll see these same features start to, uh, be available on your furnished finder dashboard as well. Uh, we've got.
tenant screening, we've got, uh, state specific leases, we've got rent payments, and the fees are paid by the tenant. So these aren't things that are coming out of your pocket, uh, most of the time. The tenant is paying for those. So what we see, uh, is kind of a standard for property fees, is the key check to the Attendance screening is around 40 per person.
Uh, you've got the monthly damage waiver through Furnished Finder now, which ranges from options between 59 for 1, 000 in coverage up to 79 monthly for 3, 500 in coverage. Um, Cleaning fees range depending on the size of the property and then if you do decide to take a deposit In combination with your monthly damage waiver or you're just gonna do a deposit We do want to give you the advice we recommend our A damage waiver for the amount of coverage you can get compared to a deposit.
But on average, we see about a third to a half of a, of the monthly rent is standard for deposits. Amenities are our next kind of topic that we want to talk about. Amenities are a fantastic way to make your property shine and also just to be really transparent. Right? With what you have and what you don't have.
This is the place where it's in your property editing dashboard and you can check off everything that your property has and keep it up to date if you improve your property or those amenities change. So in a midterm rental, people are going to expect your essentials. You're going to expect to have bed linens.
You're going to expect to have a TV, wifi. You're going to expect to have a phone. Full kitchen. Really? It's that you can come in and live comfortably. Um, the basics, right now, things that can make your place shine are things like a washer and a dryer or having that dishwasher or having room darkening shades or blackout curtains, having really high speed internet for those people who are digital nomads or work from home, having a dedicated workspace, having free parking.
Um, having access to a gym or just some fitness equipment in your, in your property, right? These are all things that are really, really, um, they're advantageous to you and they can really help you stand out. So whatever of these amenities that you have, make sure you highlight them not only by checking the box in your amenity descriptions, but when you're writing your property description, make sure you say like there is free parking, right?
Are we a really high? high speed Wi Fi and we have a really comfortable office space. Talk about the things that you have that set you apart. Yeah, I'm going to add just a few things to that. With the essentials, most midterm rental hosts and guests expect that all bills are covered. So keep that in mind when you're advertising your midterm rental is plan that into your budgeting.
Uh, and if you do want to put a cap on, uh, the electricity or work any details into the lease, you can do that, but it. It is expected to have all bills paid. Um, another thing that we get a common question for our customer service team is, well, it's a small ADU or it's an addition to my house that doesn't have a washer and dryer, doesn't have a dishwasher, has a small kitchenette, but doesn't have an oven or things like that.
Is it going to be successful on Furnished Finder? And I would say, uh, we have seen, if you go search. The Furnished Finder map, there are plenty of listings out there, including ones that we've told on the Landlord Diaries podcast that shows kitchenettes are totally doable as a midterm rental, and I can speak from experience because I have a 300 square foot ADU and I had the same thoughts, but I was already an experienced midterm rental investor.
So I thought, you know what? We're going for this. And it has been a Uh, I've had three or four stays already, uh, with midterm rental guests, five stars on the place, and it doesn't have any of the, uh, of the normal kitchen equipment. So what I brought in was a ninja air fryer and a toaster, an instapot, an electric skillet, a microwave, uh, you know, coffee pot, and then, uh, Um, a good size fridge, so you can make it a successful midterm rental, even if it's a smaller unit with a kitchenette.
And guys, remember a lot of these travelers, their alternative is a hotel. What do you get in a hotel? Like a mini fridge, maybe if it's an extended stay, you get a slightly larger fridge and a microwave, but it's all a step up from that, right? So just like Kelly said, be strategic and then talk about those things in your property description.
Thanks again. Yep, I just have two more things because this is my favorite section on the hot tips because a lot of people don't think through these things. So if you're wondering what are the most popular amenities for midterm travelers, we always keep those up to date on our Furnished Finder map. So you can go see what filters we are saying on the map and I'm gonna leave that as a surprise for you guys.
Go check it out on the Furnished Funder map and you'll see what's important right now. And we keep those updated as time passes. Uh, lastly, accessibility. We have an option on there that says, is your property wheelchair friendly? Are there stairs at your property? And I've heard midterm rental operators that have tons of listings say so many people miss the opportunity.
Because they just don't know what that means. So what it means to be wheelchair accessible is that your doorways are 32 inches or wider for a standard adult wheelchair. You know, there's not too many changes in elevation in the property. Uh, when you think of are there stairs at the property, the first thing you should think of is solutions.
Could I put a ramp at my property that makes me accessible? And this is a huge competitive advantage because from Elaine Woodward in episodes 68 and 69 of the Landlord Diaries podcast says less than 1 percent of furnished rentals are prepared for travelers with accessibility needs. All right, now it's time to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is photos.
Your photos are like The number one, not so secret, but I don't know why everybody does not prioritize it way to maximize your listings potential on furnished finder. This is like, I mean, if I could wear a t shirt everywhere I go that I see other midterm rental landlords and says, get professional pictures, get professional pictures, get professional pictures.
I would, it is the. It's such an incredible investment. It is the thing that you can do that will make you stand out visually, right? Everything Kelly and I are talking, are talking about is text, right? We're talking about completing fields. We're talking about making good headlines. We're talking about describing things.
This is visual. We live in a very, very visual society now. So you want to have the best photos. In the world, hire that professional real estate photographer. They are shockingly affordable and you will make back that ROI so quick. Also with your photos, make sure that you take pictures of the boring stuff too.
Now I'm not talking about taking a closeup picture of the toilet. But I am talking about taking a picture of the bathroom with the shower curtain open so that people can really see how they would get in and out of the shower. If there is an edge, right? Things like that. Don't forget to take pictures of the entryway.
That's going to help you with people who are getting access to the unit. Take pictures. If you have a yard and someone with a pet might want to know what is the area going to look like for my pet to go on a walk or to go out and go to the bathroom? Right? Um, take a picture of the outside of the building.
What's going on? What's the parking situation like? So there's a lot of reasons to take these photos and to make them look amazing, but the interest in your property a lot of times is, is going to be related to how great those photos are. That's the first thing. It's the make or break. If they don't like your photos, they're not going any further.
The headline is second. So really focus on those photos. So a few of the Furnished Finder things to keep in mind is it's a two photo minimum, uh, but we recommend around 20 photos, right? And that's going to vary depending on the size of your property. The best thing to keep in mind is, am I giving the property?
person, the traveler looking a complete picture of what the layout is and what's included in the property. If you're not, then take more photos or supplement it with a virtual tour because Furnished Finder wants you to be able to have that experience. Those links in your website description, if you'd like to be able to show them a virtual tour of the property.
A lot of travelers find that to be one of their safety measures to know, okay, this is the actual listing that's being advertised. So it's, those are the little things that you can do to just really stand out with the The photos and like pay attention 30 days prior to your next availability date, 30 to 60 days.
Go look at your photos on desktop, on mobile, on the app and make sure they're displaying the way that you want them to and in the order that you want them to depend on the season. If it's winter, I move my pool pictures to the back and I move my fire pit pictures to the front. So keep that in mind. A lot of our photos can be seasonal.
All right, we're getting towards the end. Number nine for our insider tips is to keep your, your calendar up to date. You guys, this is so, so, so critical. Keep your calendar up to date. First of all, if you have a booking and you haven't told Furnished Finder and you haven't updated your calendar availability, we don't know.
So you might keep getting served leads with travelers. And you might get messages, booking requests, all of these things, but your property is not available. Right. And on the flip side, if your property is available and you haven't told your calendar, like people aren't going to be able to get ahold of you.
Um, also what's really important about our platform is since we are not a booking platform, but rather we're a connection site is if. If you leave your calendar unattended for too long, right? And let's say today is January 1st and your property is vacant. And by February 1st, March 1st, April 1st, you haven't done anything.
Well, the platform is going to start to wonder, have you booked someone? Did you just forget to tell us, is this still accurate? So I recommend if your property is vacant. Go in once a week or more frequently and update your property availability to the current date until you get it filled. Okay, and I know that sometimes people are like, why do I need to do that?
Why do I need to do that? It's because we're not that direct booking site and the way we get information is with you telling us. Now you can integrate an iCal that you can get from a VRBO or from an Airbnb or other platforms that you might be able to get an iCal from. Um, And just a little hint to everybody, our calendar is getting some major improvements and you're all going to be so excited, but I'm not going to give the details just yet because.
It's just, it's going to be so great and you're all going to love it so much, but the biggest hint here, keep your calendar up to date. Katie, I have a secret bonus number 11. So I'm going to let you take two back to back so that I can wrap us up with one of my favorite features that I use personally for my midterm rentals.
All right. So the number 10 is your notifications. Make sure your notifications are on. This is a setting within your property listing. You want all of your notifications to be on. You want to go into your Furnished Finder app and make sure Those notifications are on. Okay. You want all of the notifications.
Um, I can't tell you how many times that I've been talking to a Furnished Finder host and they're like, I'm not getting any traffic. I'm not getting any traffic. And I'm like, okay, let's look at your account. I open it up and I'm like, Oh my gosh, you have direct booking requests here, right? Or you have all of these leads that are gold or you have all these messages and they're like, Oh, I didn't see them.
I'm like, Your notifications are off. So we're going to try to send you those things, but we can't send them to you if you have your notifications off. So make sure you have those things on. And the wording there is housing requests as defaulted to on, and then there's unmatched tenant leads. We, most of us, if you listen to the show, we like our unmatched tenant leads on because you can see all the stories of why someone's come to the area and it could be as simple as your calendar date just doesn't line up with theirs, but it might be a good fit.
off by like a day or two. A lot of travelers are flexible with their move in date and their move out date and they can adjust that a bit. So I like to turn those on. So super secret bonus number 11, last one for this episode is house rules. House rules is such a great Furnished Finder addition to the edit listing process.
Because it allows you to, once you book your property, you go through the tenant screening, you set up the lease, you establish the rent payments. Well, now you need a reliable place to communicate the house rules to your guests. That's built into your edit listing process. You can add your, um, access codes, the address.
Furnished Finder kind of prompts you through what you need to think through to tell your midterm rental guests, such as when is trash day? How many pets can be allowed? How many parking spots are there? Do you have any additional items that need attention in the kitchen as far as how they should operate or things like that?
So there's so many great things in the house rules. And when you need to. update something across the board with your operations, all you have to do is literally copy and paste. You go to your next house, copy and paste. And so that's been a really helpful tool for me, uh, when someone is a day before move in or once they've paid that first month's rent, then I download the PDF of the house rules from Furnished Finder and I email them a copy and text them to let them know that it's on the, on its way.
Um, well, we hope you guys have found this helpful. If you guys have never listed a property with Furnished Finder before, and this is your first time, just remember that you're in full control and you can go in and you can edit these things and you can change them as much as you like. Just be really tapped in, be ready for those tenant leads, be prepared and take some time to put your best foot forward on your listing.
And if you need more help and more ways to find success with your Furnished Finder journey, make sure you check out our blog, other videos on our YouTube page. And we have so many episodes of episodes of the Landlord Diaries that will help you to really just maximize your midterm rental journey and become the best landlord that you can.