As a real estate investor in the evolving rental landscape, mastering the art of pricing your monthly (mid-term) rental is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and profitability. In this article, we distill insights from a recent episode with Kyle Driskell, Senior Solutions Consultant at PriceLabs, discussing actionable strategies to optimize your midterm rental pricing. Whether you’re a seasoned landlord or new to this niche, these strategies can help align your pricing to market demands and maximize your investment potential.
Understanding the pricing problem
Hosts frequently struggle with setting monthly rental rates due to the fear of overpricing or underpricing. Unlike short-term rentals with frequent turnover and flexibility, midterm rentals often bind you to seasonal rates for extended periods, typically around 90 days. The right pricing matters.
Establishing Your Baseline: Monthly Expenses
An effective pricing strategy starts with understanding your monthly expenses beyond just mortgage costs. Consider other essential costs: utilities, trash removal, maintenance reserves, and potential HOA fees. A comprehensive expense overview ensures you’re not only covering costs but also achieving desired profitability. Furnished Finder offers a pricing worksheet (opens in new tab) and PriceLabs (opens in new tab) offers an efficient toolset to help adjust and automate these aspects, ensuring that you are always aligned with market shifts.
Researching the Market: Finding Your Sweet Spot
Research is a pivotal step in monthly midterm rental pricing. Platforms like Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) offer invaluable resources, including their Market Insights (opens in new tab), to help you gauge demand and assess comparable listings in your area. Analyze view-per-listing ratios to determine market demand intensity. Delve into similar amenities and offerings to ensure your rates are competitive without compromising your unique selling propositions.
Pricing Tools and Techniques
PriceLabs brings advanced dynamic pricing tools to the table, offering a strategic advantage for midterm rental operators. Unlike short-term rentals, midterm strategies necessitate stability rather than frequent rate fluctuations. PriceLabs customizes these nuances by considering local market trends, such as seasonal academic sessions or healthcare center demands. Utilizing dynamic pricing ensures you adapt to demand fluctuations without erratic pricing shifts.
Testing and Adjusting Your Pricing
Adopting a proactive approach to pricing involves regularly assessing your performance metrics. Monitor your Furnished Finder Listing Performance Panel for comprehensive insights into views, favorites, and lead conversions. Identifying patterns in these metrics allows for timely adjustments, ensuring your properties remain competitive in changing markets.
Tackling the Hybrid Strategy: Mixing Short and Midterm Rentals
For hosts with the flexibility to manage both short and midterm rentals, an opportunistic approach—known as the "faucet method"—can be beneficial. This involves activating short-term rentals to capitalize on high-demand periods and reverting to midterm rentals during lean periods. Platforms like PriceLabs can help streamline this transition with ease through customized calendar and pricing settings.
Final Notes: Addressing Common Pricing Concerns
While pricing fears are common among landlords transitioning to midterm rentals, arming yourself with the right strategies and tools mitigates these concerns significantly. By leveraging insights from platforms like PriceLabs (opens in new tab) and Furnished Finder (opens in new tab), you can establish a robust rental pricing strategy that optimizes your revenue potential.
For more details and practical insights into transforming your midterm rental pricing strategy, listen to the full podcast episode 144 (opens in new tab) with PriceLabs and Furnished Finder on The Landlord Diaries Podcast (opens in new tab). It’s filled with expert advice, firsthand experiences, and practical tips to elevate your rental game.
Remember, entering the midterm rental market doesn't have to be daunting. With informed pricing strategies, backed by data-driven insights, you can confidently set rates that ensure profitability and competitiveness in the dynamic real estate landscape.
Episode 144 Transcript
I think the number one thing you're gonna look for is the location and try to find people that are similarly located to you. Then you want to branch off a little and look for similar amenities, even if it's not in the exact location, are you still two miles away from a hospital?
Look for those types of things. The things that you would consider the selling point for your property. if you've got a pool, that's a selling point. look for things that have pools. If you have an EV charger, I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, right before we got on here as search Furnished Finder.
There are four properties that have an EV charger. If I have that, I know those are the people that I need to talk to, it's really important to, be honest about your property and say Hey, we've got our minimum price. Now we know what that threshold is.
we wanna maximize revenue, but be honest about your properties. Compare apples to apples. 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 best landlord life.
This podcast is proudly brought to you by Furnished Finder. The largest online marketplace for midterm rentals. Remember to like and subscribe. today, we're tackling how to price your midterm rentals to stay competitive and profitable. Joining us is Kyle Driskell, Senior Solutions Consultant at PriceLabs. We'll discuss strategies to help you set smarter rates and maximize your rental income.
Kyle, we appreciate you joining us. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. that was a lovely introduction, so thank you very much. Um, I think, you know, we do, we do the Rev Labs podcast and I kind of want you to come and do my intros now from now on.
Great. One of the main things that we want to talk about first is the pricing problem, right? Like why host struggle with midterm rental rates and how to price it. But before we discuss that, why don't you give us a brief overview of, why you joined PriceLabs and what's your story that makes you an expert in this field?
absolutely. I really appreciate the time and love representing PriceLabs. a little background about myself. I used to work for a really large property management company, mainly in the short term rental space. we did a lot of short term focus, but in that, I learned a lot about midterm rentals as well.
I think, there's a lot of people that will, do hybrid strategies or, completely change it up, if the short term rental game wasn't working for 'em. We tried the midterm rentals. So that was kind of my first foray into midterm rentals. as I got to PriceLabs, I started learning more about it.
working with customers, understanding the differences and nuances and really what you have to achieve with a midterm rental. we want to cover our costs. Make sure we get those five star ratings, just the same way as we do with short term rentals.
There's a lot that you can compare, but there's so much in midterm rentals that is different from short term rentals. So I'm really looking forward to talk about that. one of the things we're going to really focus on for this episode, what are the internal Furnished Finder tools you can use for pricing, such as our pricing ebook, which you can find in the show notes, and how you can boost those strategies with PriceLabs as well.
Some of those common pricing problems that hosts struggle with is that fear of overpricing or underpricing. Katie, why don't you lead into the Furnished Finder outlook in this, and then Kyle, you follow that with what you see on the price lab. Yeah. I think, it is a pretty common fear from the midterm rental landlord as far as am I too high?
Am I not high enough? Could I be getting more from my property to help cover more expenses and pull more profit? once you get a tenant, you're usually locked in at that rate for between. 90 days, you know, it could be upwards of six months if you want.
So pricing is particularly important in midterm as compared to short term. if you say $2,000 a month and you sign a six month lease, you're locked in, right? So that fear of overpricing and underpricing gets elevated it's extremely elevated for midterm rentals because you have such a fine timeline to get those booked up in a short-term rental, you can fill something with two or three days. But if you're going for a midterm rental and somebody, leaves a 15 day gap, depending on where you're at, that can be really,
Troublesome to your revenue strategy. So I think it's really important to make sure that you're dialed in, that you know, in the market, what are people actually booking at. if we go to Furnished Finder.com (opens in new tab) right now and look at July. We're gonna see the people that are available and those rates
I like going in and looking a little bit ahead of time and trying to find some comp units for yourself so that you can really understand what's attainable. you don't wanna shoot for the stars if you don't have something that can attain those stars. And you also don't wanna, you know, shoot yourself on the foot and not get as much money as you can.
Well, I think this is the perfect lead in. How to find that price, how to get your pricing strategy, we've got Kyle here who is the master from PriceLabs and he's gonna help us so that you're not guessing, right? And you can overcome that fear. am I too high priced?
Am I not high enough? Where do I land? First step, is determining your monthly expenses. you've hinted at that a little bit, Kyle, but talk to us about what should really go into this, because I think a lot of times people just say, my mortgage is a thousand dollars, or my mortgage is $2,000.
What else do you really need to think of and consider when you're determining your monthly expenses as a part of the equation? for a midterm rental, it's really good to start looking broadly and look at it as an overall year as well. you're gonna have your minimums that you've gotta hit and all of that, but there's so much that you can do with your calendar I want you to start by taking a look at it as a 12 month picture and then break it into quarter.
So if we can segment it and say, Hey, this is what my yearly goal is. This is what my quarterly goal is, and then maybe get down to that monthly average. You can really optimize your strategy. I do think that going in and making sure that you're covering all those expenses that you have to have, the utilities, trash removal, all of that stuff, you wanna make sure that you are absolutely covering all of those.
And then also having just a little bit extra on top of there for you. some of the ways that you can go in and we mentioned a couple times, I'm with Christ Labs. I don't want this to come across as a sales pitch so I do wanna talk about how they can observe this stuff on Furnished Finder.
At the end of it, you can always come to PriceLabs, find this information as well. in Furnished Finder you can go in and look at calendars and really start to understand a lot with what they've provided you. one of the things that I would suggest is, I know we're talking about the expenses side of it, but ultimately your expenses, if you've got a thousand dollars as your total expense level, your minimums that you may see in the market are around 14, 1500.
You could say, I'm covered with my expenses. Let's add a little bit on top maximize your revenue that way. We are here to give everybody a holistic approach to pricing. PriceLabs is a fantastic tool in the toolbox, one that people shouldn't miss, but there's a lot of other things that you need to consider that can help you land on that number.
I would encourage everybody when you're looking at your. Expenses. don't forget things like, are you gonna have a damage protection plan? Do you have a reserve for maintenance? Do you have any condo or HOA fees? Have you set enough aside for utilities? Do you have any reserves for vacancy? I think a lot of times I've met with, and Kyle, I'm sure you've probably talked to hundreds of landlords who have the same, they're like, well, my mortgage is a thousand dollars, so I need to pull in at least that.
No, that's not your total expenses. you wanna make sure that your bare minimum is truly your bare minimum, right? and there are instances where in some properties, you might be taking a loss for a while and that's part of your strategy or long-term hold, or you're waiting for a market to rebound or something to appreciate
Totally fine. just understanding that you wanna make sure that you're counting utilities, have a reserve for maintenance or furnishing upgrades. those things are, really important when you're finding your number. one additional thing to add if you're a pet friendly property, make sure that you have a little bit of. Extra built in there as well, just in case anything does happen. That way you can get it fixed up real quick for your next tenant, I'm gonna take a minute to, address something that both of you have mentioned.
The idea of gaps in midterm rentals, and that's something that if you're looking to get started in the midterm rental space, you actually, it can be a fear for some people of, oh, I just don't know what my occupants. Occupancy's going to be, it might be large. but what we see, on average is that occupancies are closer to long-term rental.
On the landlord diaries, we've actually heard numerous hosts, including myself and, and Katie, say, over 95% occupancy with their midterm rental. So you're not necessarily seeing large gaps. even if you have a week or two gap once here or there, that is still very minimal on your vacancies.
So we're gonna get into some pricing strategies later, but let's keep going on how to find that sweet spot in your rental rate. Great feedback so far. you really have to understand what your costs are going to be and are you going to be able to be profitable.
the next part of that is researching the market to see what am I actually going to be able to charge to offset that expense and see that it is profitable for me to go ahead and move forward with the midterm rental strategy. So Katie, what are those Furnished Finder steps we recommend, for getting started in the midterm rental space and analyzing this?
Yeah, I think it's important to look at the stats page first finder.com/stats (opens in new tab). There we're gonna give you some insights. We also call it market insights. what I like to do is look at it as a ratio. It will show you the total number of listings and the total number of page views. Then from that, you can derive.
Number of page views per listing. You wanna see that number high, right? You wanna see some really strong demand in that area. I like to see it at 3, 4, 500 or above. It's gonna depend market to market. Don't get thrown off if it's lower. You just wanna make sure that you are diving deeper to really understand it.
and then looking. Through the comparable listings. Kyle, I would love to have you chime in here. I'm looking at comps, what types of things do you like to look at? what are other properties that are kind of like mine pricing themselves?
how do I know what is a true comparison? would we be starting on Furnished Finder or trying to identify something to differentiate ourselves? if we're going into the filters you can utilize everything there for Furnished Finder to find a way to differentiate yourself.
Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Furnished Finder, the ultimate platform for hassle-free midterm rentals.
Whether you're a seasoned landlord. We're just getting started. Furnished Finder has everything you need to find your next tenant. With Furnished Finder, you can say goodbye to booking fees, markups, and commissions, and hello to Direct bookings. If you are ready to experience all the benefits renting your property for 30 days or more, head over to furnished finder.com (opens in new tab) where you can list your property for one low annual price.
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Let's talk about if I don't know what my pricing is gonna be how do I know roughly what I could get for this type of property? Maybe I'm not trying to upscale it or get, higher revenue quite yet.
But what if I'm sitting here and I have a two bed, two bath. guest house in Phoenix, Arizona and I'm on a furnished finder. How do I know that other properties I'm looking at would be comparables? what kind of things are important when I'm trying to comp a property one-to-one?
I think the number one thing you're gonna look for is the location and try to find people that are similarly located to you. Then you want to branch off and look for similar amenities. even if it's not in the exact location, are you still two miles away from a hospital?
Look for those types of things. The things you would consider the selling point for your property. if you've got pool access, that's a selling point. Let's go and look for things that have poles. If you have an EV charger, you know, I, I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. Right before we get on here as search Furnished Finder, there are four properties that have an EV charger.
If I have that, I know those are the people that I need to talk to, it's important to, be honest with yourselves about your property and say we've got our minimum price. Now we know what that threshold is. Obviously we wanna maximize revenue, but be honest about your properties.
Compare apples to apples. if you have a private fence, make sure the places you're looking at have private fences as well, or if they don't. add a little extra value for that if what you're seeing in your comp set doesn't have that privacy.
So yeah, it's kind of arbitrary based off the market. You know, if you have a pool, you could say maybe that adds an extra 50 bucks a night. Again, it's gonna be an arbitrary number based off where you're at, but you should look at all those selling points that you've got. those main selling points are gonna be the amenities, privacy
Location, proximity and things like that. And I think pet friendliness would be a huge one, especially for midterms, and like how you're furnishing it, when I've been looking for comms for properties of mine it's kinda like, okay, how else are other ones furnishing this?
Because if you can tell it's outdated furnishings or things that have seen a lot of wear and tear, well your property might have brand new furnishings or you might be willing to invest a little bit more. Those are all things that make that number flex a little bit and are really important to remember.
Absolutely. if you don't mind, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the research I did and the area I was looking at. when I was looking at some of the stuff towards the lower end of the market. I don't mean quality. I mean, in the pricing that's still available.
You could find certain things like, if they updated their duvet covers. Put blackout curtains in there. They could probably charge a little bit more But those differentiators are so big. And just to talk about how important it is for your ability to generate revenue in Knoxville, we had 251 properties on furnish binder.
We had 150 of those that said they had a dedicated workspace. That's about half of them, But then when we start layering on other things, let's say I'm coming to Knoxville. I wanna stay at a place for three months or six months, I need a workspace.
I need good internet. I have a pet and I wanna bring my pet. When you start layering those things on the opportunities for people to book are a lot lower. And what we get down to is there's 13 listings that are pet friendly that say they have good internet that say that have a dedicated workspace.
So that is something you can do on that second option I was talking about earlier. When you wanna find a way to differentiate yourself, go in there play around with some of the stuff see where you can add extra value see what people are wanting in your market
I just love hearing you two go back and forth about, the ways that your pricing reminder. Katie and I are both active, midterm rental hosts on Furnished Finder. I've got around 10 listings, Katie around 14. and some of the things that, we experience in our markets is. Sometimes you just gotta jump in and test out pricing, right?
It's like you don't want analysis paralysis to hold you up from getting started. So one of the things that I've done is, you know, that idea of. When it comes to pricing, you do your research on Furnished Finder. You, use PriceLabs, as an extra boost. You wanna look at Airbnb and Zillow and extended stay hotels to check the market to see that you're on the right track.
And then you get in there and Price your rental. what are some signs that maybe it's too high or too low? you're getting a ton of inquiries and have it booked right away. Maybe you price it too low or you're not getting any inquiries. Maybe it's too high
Quality of the listing, is important to factor into pricing If you don't have professional photos, you're not going to be able to price your listing as high. my pricing only fluctuates about eight to 10% throughout the year.
I'm midterm rentals only, and once I get it booked, if it's a longer stay, then I'll bump it up a couple hundred bucks. if. that next availability someone is reaching out early, I can test the market and see if, a little bit higher pricing's. Okay? Or if I get within 30 days of my next availability, maybe I tweak it back to that, rate.
I know, has been reliable in the past. So that's how I do it. Katie, anything that you do pricing wise on Furnished Finder over the years that is kind of a hack you could share? not really. I think just knowing your numbers is really important, right? knowing your bare minimum.
Knowing your bare minimum that you're willing to accept and being patient, right? It's okay if it takes a week or two to fill your spot or you have a little bit of a gap. with a midterm stay, typically the numbers work out better if you hold out for the rate that you truly believe you have the value, versus giving.
A discount that you're not comfortable with or doesn't fit your strategy, because then you're locked into that for quite a while. my number one tip is having confidence and patience, I like how Kyle, you're honing in on the amenities because that's so important with midterm rentals.
what is your parking situation like? Are you pet friendly? Do you have a workstation? Do you have that ev charger? Do you have a private backyard? Is your location Unbeatable. have confidence in those and know that they do have value. Absolutely.
Having extra amenities and things like that. there's always that possibility that that's something that one person is looking for. So by being thorough, by being complete with your listings, making sure that on Furnished Finder you're going in and actually saying, Hey, we've got these amenities
It's super important. And Kelly, you mentioned, the merchandising of the listings as well. That's super important. 'cause ultimately, Furnished Finder is a marketplace, so you want to have updated photos. You want to have them in a way to tell a story, as well.
And, you know, if you've got your numbers dialed in, you know, your market. Then you can start focusing on those little bitty ancillary things like amenities updating your photos and drawing more eyes to it. The purpose of this episode is to help all of you feel confident in your midterm rental pricing strategies.
We do have a furnished finder pricing Worksheet coming out very soon. see the show notes. It will be in there once it's available and you are going to feel so confident in your pricing. we wanna take a moment to help PriceLabs, expand on the tools that Take that pressure off of you and do that pricing work for you.
sometimes I forget, I'm like, oh, I still have that price that I set a couple months ago. I need to adjust it and PriceLabs will do that for you. So I think there's some specific qualities that are, valuable to midterm rental operators that, whether they're midterm rental only or the operate, the hybrid strategy.
So why don't you, Give us an overview of some of those, Kyle. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I wanna, I wanna kind of point out is that there are many marketplaces out there. Obviously Furnished Finder is the one that we want you to be utilizing for your midterms, but there's a lot of data that's still out there.
PriceLabs does scrape some additional websites that will give us some. Very specific midterm patterns. we can look on other websites and see, you know, hey, are there certain amenities that may be working for them? Then all of a sudden we can pull that back over to Furnished Finder. one of the things PriceLabs really helps with midterm rentals dynamic pricing
Now, we don't need. crazy spikes in our dynamic pricing, if anybody has worked with short term rentals, you know, during low season we've dropped price. During high season, we raise price. Real high midterm rentals don't need those spikes. But there are still things in the market that can move.
as long as we get that firm understanding of our market. An example I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee. It's a college town. As a midterm property owner in Knoxville, you can make a little more money during graduation season. The football season is not as impactful for midterm rentals 'cause we have people coming in for, academia the University of Tennessee healthcare, center
But there are some extra spikes that you can get for midterm rentals. if you have families that wanna come in and stay for a little bit during graduation season, those things can be picked up in tools like PriceLabs. it's not gonna send your rates through the roof where you're trying to charge $800 a night, but it could help you add an extra five to $10 per day if we see that demand's increasing there.
think of it as PriceLabs would be able to do a little bit of. Heavy lifting for you. So that data analysis, the understanding of the market that we're talking about, it's built up to do that heavy lifting for you, lets you make some decisions and customize the tool how you want to, and ultimately, generate as much revenue as possible.
Yeah, and this is fantastic because pricing can feel like a really big decision. It can feel pretty intimidating, especially if you're not comfortable with it or if it's something you haven't done before. PriceLabs can give you that headstart. then what's really cool is you can take that suggestion from PriceLabs, put it into your Furnished Finder and you can test it.
And you can go up and down 'cause you're in control of your Furnished Finder listing. And you also know that you're gonna get a hundred percent of that revenue, right? So there's no commissions, there's no booking fees. So you know that if you're charging $2,000 of rent, you don't have to sit there and try to do the calculations of, how much do I actually get in my pocket after all of the fees what you can focus on is. Feeling really good in that number and doing any improvements that you need to do. I would encourage everybody if you make a pricing change to keep an eye on your listing performance panel in your dashboard, that's gonna show you your views. It's gonna show you your favorites.
It's gonna show you your number of leads so you can keep track and see if that increases or if that decreases. what I'm hearing you say, Kyle, is that dynamic pricing where you're changing your pricing all the time. It's just not as much of a thing in midterm rentals at all, which is quite the relief because that sounds a lot to keep up with.
So I think, you know, you've got some seasonality changes if you add amenities, things like that. But overall, stability. Is your friend here. absolutely agree. having a little bit of movement can be helpful. And the other side of PriceLabs that's helpful is the automation side of it.
So if your rates are at 2000 and it's like, Hey, we can't get it booked out. Tweak it down just a little bit. short term has a lot, in common with midterm, in midterm rentals, don't change multiple things at once. This is a tip for revenue management, whether it's for midterm rental or generally in life. You want to make small tweaks, observe what happens with those tweaks, and then potentially add on to 'em.
If you're trying to get $2,000, don't just slash your rate down to 1400, you don't learn anything from that, If you gotta get $1,400, you gotta get $1,400, My suggestion would be taking, $50 off here, $50 off there, make small movements.
That way you can observe and, gather better information about, what you can charge for your property. I think you can take that advice and apply it to The entire way you manage your midterm rental. I see some people, and I'll be talking to someone at a conference and they're like, I changed my pictures, I added pets.
I, added access to the clubhouse and increased my price. How are we gonna ever know what worked? one thing at a time, having that patience. If you wanna do something like adding pets, but then you also want to add a pet deposit, fantastic.
But then if you need to tweak something, maybe tweak the pet deposit amount. Let it simmer see how it works out, and listen to what the market is telling you, What are other ways that we can really hear what the market is telling you? Obviously, we have the. golden rule of like, well, you're either getting demand or you're not.
You're booking or you're not, right. But what else can we use as signals that it's working, or maybe it's time to tweak I think number one is conversion, are you actually getting the bookings coming in? you have great insights on Furnished Finder into the views and the number of clicks.
Those are very important as well. So if you know that you average a hundred clicks per week, and then all of a sudden you bump up to one 20, then you know that you've made a move that works for you. That is very important to observe.
I think the amount of inquiries you get is gonna be that number one thing to say has something worked. when I've tweaked it, I think those are the main ones for me. we can't go through a whole pricing episode without hearing more on the short-term rental hosts that wanna embrace midterm as well.
for Katie and I, when we are midterm only, or we want to mainly focus on the midterm rental strategy. we suggest to hosts, the faucet method where you turn on short-term rentals when you have local events or high seasons, and then turn it off and turn on midterm rentals for the rest of the year.
another strategy is. To fill your midterm rental gaps with short-term rentals if your HOA or area allows you to. Kyle, I'd love to hear from you. For someone that is mainly short-term rentals, but they're seeing a lot of vacancy or high swings, in off season, how do you recommend they jump into calendar management and pricing to really hone in on how to add midterm rentals to their short-term rental game?
Yeah, I think, specifically from a price lab standpoint, we offer a lot of customizations within our tool for you to very easily switch that so you can set it up to where January through March is a midterm rental season, and then everything else is a short-term rental season. it's really important to understand the overall occupancy in the market. The earlier you can identify when you want to switch to a midterm strategy, the better it's gonna be for you. you're able to get in there and make your rates exactly where you want 'em. In short term rental space, you're allowed to play with your minimum stays a lot more than if you're in a homeowner, association restricted area or in a market that's really restrictive and says, Hey, you know, 30 nights only.
So I think it's important to make your decision early, but ultimately you want to see what differentiates yourself How are you going to convince people? to stay 20 plus nights or three months generally you need to highlight, the workspaces, all of those things. spend time researching Furnished Finder. See what they highlight the amenities on your dropdown. are key for midterm rentals. If you're not offering pet friendly, if you're not offering, dedicated workspaces.
You're gonna struggle a little bit. So I think it's important to do the research. but ultimately it's pretty simple, for you to switch to a midterm. especially because you have that ability to control your minimum length of stay, a lot easier now. and if you ever want to have a full on podcast about the drip method that you talked about,
I love that strategy when people can do it. If you can protect your Tennessee versus Alabama game, get a thousand dollars a night on it. Heck, that's perfect for you. And then you can go back into a midterm strategy. I'm pretty sure Kyle's referring to, SDR for events that are really bringing a lot of people into your area, with that drip method and then switching over to midterm rentals in off season or slow season.
I think the last part I really wanna hone in to, that's important for your pricing is if you have imbalanced tenant fees and your, refundable deposits way higher than others in the market, or you're not taking advantage of the damage protection plan as an option, for extra peace of mind, for your rentals.
if those fees are imbalanced, you're going to not be as competitive with your pricing even if your rental rate is on par. I'd love Katie for you to dive into some of those important fees, that we've seen most common on Furnished Finder. I think it's important to remember a damage protection plan, which we offer with Wavo.
that ranges from 59 to $79 a month. That can give you some added security if you are concerned about pets or want an added layer of property protection. We have a lot of landlords who Sleep better at night knowing they have that, which is fantastic. a standard deposit is gonna come with a midterm rental, which you're not gonna see with your typical Airbnb, right?
A short term stay. most frequent amount we see there is about $500. We suggest about one third to one half of a month rent. these are another, you know, these are important to your pricing because if you're asking for a full month's rent on a security deposit. You're probably gonna lose some people there.
And if you really feel strongly like you're like, Nope, that's what I want, that's okay. You have the control. You can do that. You just need to know. You might lose some people there. And to Kyle's point, test it, Lower it a little bit, see what changes. But test one thing at a time.
cleaning fee. It's important. We're used to cleaning fees on short-term rentals. midterm rentals are usually a little bit of a larger cleaning fee because that cleaner's gonna get in there and wipe out all the cabinets and wipe the baseboards, more of a deep clean. you can also have a pet deposit.
You can have whatever you want, But it's important to be transparent. reasonable, and competitive. look at. The listing price, like you, the rent price that you're charging, look at the fees of other, competitors in the area too.
I really like what Kyle said too. Choose properties who have amenities that mimic yours and, and look at not only their prices, but their fees too. So if there's a single family home that has a fenced yard that offers, you know, dogs are allowed, cats are allowed. What's their dam like? What, what's their, damage deposit?
what is their cleaning fee like? you can take hints and cues from these, which is a really important thing to remember. You don't have to start at zero. That's the best place in revenue management for you to be able to differentiate yourself. going back to, my experience on Furnished Finder, looking at the Knoxville market, the one I went to that looked like it was at the most premium spot had the one month you had to pay the full deposit of the month.
I immediately backed out of it. If I were looking for a place on Furnished Finder, that was something that. Instantly was like, Nope, not doing it. Can't spend an extra 4K on that. I go to the next one and you see it. there is something about those extra fees Doesn't matter if you've got 10 of 'em listed.
If they're all reasonable and makes sense to people, it's not gonna, it's not gonna hurt you too much. what hurts you is when people go in there and they say, a claiming fee, it's $2,500 and everybody else is $400, I would love to wrap up this episode with simple, practical pricing strategies, because it doesn't have to feel overwhelming.
It doesn't have to feel like you're getting yourself in the weeds quickly. You can, there's some simple tips you can apply and I'd love to hear from Kyle how he recommends someone double check their pricing or get started with their midterm rental pricing,
So let's go to Furnished Finder, look at a couple of different time periods in your area. look three months in advance and six months in advance. And I want you to observe how many properties are available three months out, how many are available six months out.
If you can figure out those properties that are booked in between maybe you've got 150 that are available three months out, 170 that are available six months out, Look for those 20 that are in there and see what is getting those booked out.
Maybe it's because they've got incredibly low rates Maybe they've got year long type stays. There's always some information you can get from there. If they have reviews, pay attention to your competition's reviews and see what people are saying good and negative about them.
That's where you can really win with your property is figuring out how do I do things the same as them that they're doing right, and how do I do better than them, on the other side? that'd be my piece of advice. I think that is such a great way to look at your rental business as a whole, right?
What needs are you serving and how can you do it in a way that nobody else can match you? Absolutely. hospitality's, coming back to be the king, and hospitality and amenities are the wave of the future I suppose. just a reminder, if you are looking for resources, check the show notes.
take advantage of PriceLabs strategy tools to simplify and make your pricing easier. See the show notes for our, new Furnished Finder pricing strategy worksheet. start looking at the maps on Furnished Finder, Airbnb, Zillow, and see what your competition is charging and jump into the midterm rental game.
thanks for joining us. Don't forget to like, subscribe and comment If you'd like to share this episode with a friend, you can connect with Kyle through PriceLabs and the show notes. Thanks for being with us Kyle, you got a one-liner. You wanna take us out with something fun, something motivational.
You mentioned the word fear a couple of times in this, and I know when it comes to pricing, there's a lot of fear. Don't be worried about it. Go use what you've got, use Furnished Finder, research your comps, and you'll be good to go.