In the dynamic world of real estate investment, the emergence of monthly (mid-term) rentals has provided landlords with an exciting opportunity for growth and increased revenue. In a recent episode of Furnished Finder’s podcast, Landlord Diaries, Megan Ahern shared her transformative journey with monthly rentals. Her experience offers invaluable insights into how landlords can navigate challenges and maximize profits in this niche market.
The win-win of monthly rentals
Monthly rentals stays are typically between one and twelve months but average 90 days on Furnished Finder. They offer a sweet spot between the stability of long-term leasing and the profitability of short-term stays. Megan's experience is a testament to the potential of monthly rentals to significantly increase rental revenue. Originally renting units for $950 per month as long-term rentals, switching to monthly rentals allowed her to charge up to $1950, effectively doubling her income.
Turning challenges into opportunities
Megan's journey began with a challenging project—a seven-plex that quickly earned the moniker of "the seven-plex from hell." Faced with evictions, property damage, and unexpected construction costs, Megan pivoted to a monthly rental strategy with remarkable success. This adaptability is crucial for real estate investors looking to turn potential setbacks into lucrative opportunities.
Learning from mistakes
Be prepared for the unexpected: Megan’s experience with unexpected property issues, such as sewer line backups, underscores the importance of preparation. Conducting thorough post-construction inspections can help prevent costly surprises and maintain tenant satisfaction.
Effective communication: One of Megan's early challenges was managing tenant transitions. By implementing timely check-ins with tenants regarding their move-out dates and potential lease extensions, she streamlined operations and minimized vacancies.
Market data: Use data to your advantage. Megan highlights the use of Furnished Finder’s Market Insights to evaluate the supply-demand ratio in target areas. This ensures competitive positioning and maximizes profitability.
Maximizing revenue potential
Embracing monthly rentals can unlock untapped revenue potential. Functional and appealing furnishings, coupled with professional photography and running your rental like a business, can enhance tenant experiences and ultimately, profitability. With platforms like Furnished Finder (opens in new tab), landlords can easily manage their listings and connect with potential tenants in search of monthly accommodations.
Key takeaways
As a real estate investor, balancing the wins and mistakes is part of the journey. Whether you're considering transitioning your properties to monthly rentals or are just getting started, Megan's story is a beacon of what's possible. Her strategic pivot not only salvaged a problematic investment but also showcased the ability of monthly rentals to generate impressive returns.
For a deep dive into Megan Ahern's strategies (opens in new tab) and further insights on succeeding in monthly rentals, tune in to Furnished Finder’s podcast, Landlord Diaries (opens in new tab), for more tips and resources designed to help landlords maximize their investment potential.
Episode 150 Transcript
I was most proud of how quickly it booked, like within going up on, on the sites Furnished Finder analyst, mine on Airbnb. It was booked within one day. I was amazed we can't fill a long-term tenant that fast. Which, which made me go maybe I'm not asking enough for it. And I thought I was asking quite a lot.
And then I just started increasing it in, increasing it, and really pushing like, how far can I make this go without still experiencing vacancy. So I think we had listed originally for 1400, and now we're getting like 1950 on those same units. Like I had no idea that it was gonna be that much, because we would probably rent that for nine 50 if it was a long-term rental.
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. Get ready for a real estate rollercoaster. Today we're talking with Megan Ahern, the Tatty investor, who turned a seven plex from hell into the launchpad for her thriving midterm rental business. Megan opens up about what she nailed, what she totally misjudged, and how midterm rentals, especially through Furnished Finder, became the surprising sweet spot that brought her more cash flow with way less stress.
I'm liking the sounds of this, Megan, how are you today? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Yes, thanks for being with us. I'd love to start with, you know what you got right? And what you got wrong is the theme for this episode. So why don't you give us a brief story on the seven Plex challenges and how midterm rentals save the day.
Yeah, sure. So we had before this point already bought about a hundred properties, and then about two years ago we stretched ourself and we bought a seven plex. And before that it was just single families duplexes. So it was definitely a learning curve. And this. Property. We called our seven plex from hell because everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.
Like we had seven tenants in there. Originally, we were gonna do the construction in two phases. We gave them 30 days notice to vacate, and then nobody paid rent. So we ended up having to evict all seven. Tenants on the way out, they destroyed things. They broke every single window. They stole all the air conditioning units.
They started breaking in through the siding and just doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And then once we started into the construction phase, we realized the properties were so much. Because it's three different buildings, so the buildings were so much worse than what we had even imagined on the front end.
We ended up having to change out like six sewer lines massively reframe the entire property. It went. Way over budget. So we had purchased it for 420,000. Thought we were gonna put 250,000 into the rehab and ended up putting $530,000 into the rehab. So that was what went wrong. But halfway through the construction, we realized we were way over budget on this.
So I was trying to increase the rents and increase the NOI so that we could increase the value, it being multifamily. I thought that's how it worked. If you could increase the NOI multiply by the cap rate, you increase the value, right? So I ended up putting the first four units as a midterm rental strategy, never done that before, but was really surprised that we were able to almost double the rents from long-term rents to midterm rental rents.
What's your portfolio look like now and how has that shift to midterm helped you, maintain this profitability and have a little bit less stress? So right now we have about 35 units across our portfolio. About 10 of them are midterm rentals. Since kind of testing it out on that project where we felt like we had to test it out I really fell in love with the strategy.
So we started buying more small unit like duplexes and even quadplexes that are two bedroom units. Previous to that, if we were just doing long-term rents. We could never really make one and two bedroom units cashflow on duplexes. So we were always looking at three bedroom or four bedroom. And so this just opened up a whole different set of assets in our area that we could start to cashflow because we're using the midterm rental strategy.
And you had a couple discoveries along the way of maybe misconceptions about the midterm rental strategy and then were pleasantly surprised in the process with, the fact that the guests are a way easier on the property and the vacancy, which was much less than you expected. Why don't you share those insights with us?
Yeah, so I had tried short-term rental tried one property on a short-term rental in the past and just didn't love it because we had a lot of vacancy. It was. It's Lincoln, Nebraska, so nobody really just travels here. Like it's not a tourist destination. So we would have very low nightly rates and a lot of times it's college kids that are just booking our place to party in for the weekend.
And it was just such a churn, like it was such a pain in the butt. And then we would have big vacancy during the winter and it would be great during the summer. So I just hated that we got rid of that property. I thought it would be the same with that, with being midterm rentals. And so I never really got into that and it wasn't, it was totally different.
Like we're hitting less than 5% vacancy on our midterm rentals, almost about the same vacancy rate as our. Long-term rentals, and it's just way easier to deal with because you don't have, you're only turning the property maybe every three months to six months, but the people coming in are so much lighter on the property, like they're coming in, they're working all day, they're sleeping at night, and that's it.
Like they're not. Hard on it. They're not moving furniture in and out. I think it's even easier than a long-term tenants because with long-term tenants, when you're doing those turns, you're having to patch drywall from the lag bolts, from hanging the TV on the wall and hanging their pictures and whatnot.
And you don't have that really with midterm tenants because it's your tv and that stays and so it's easier to do the turns. We had one long-term rental in our portfolio. It was our old single family home that we used to live in, and we kept it as a rental for a few years. And when we were turning over tenants, I was like, cool, one day should be plenty for us to get the cleaner in there.
I was so wrong. That was the longest day of my life because those long-term tenants, like there's a lot more wear and tear you experience from not being in there for, a year or two if they've. If they've extended and like you said, like haig stuff up on the walls, all this stuff that does like more wear and tear and you have no idea until you're in there.
So I, I love that point. I haven't thought about that in a while. And I think that's really significant because like you already have it ready to go. Nobody's gonna come into a midterm rental and hang up a tv, right? Like it's already there for them. So I think that's fantastic. So clearly your team midterm rental.
As are we, obviously with our own portfolios. But talk to us about when you are looking at a property, how do you know that a midterm rental is right for the, for a specific property or when to utilize midterm rentals in your own portfolio? Yeah, so usually for us it's those smaller units.
We do have one three bedroom midterm rental, and that one seems to have a little bit higher vacancy than the other ones. So if I can find the one bedroom units or two bedroom units on a small multifamily property, I can most likely get it to cash flow as a midterm rental, and I can be pretty secure in that.
I'm gonna be able to keep it rented up constantly. That three bedroom might be like a little bit nuanced. It might not be just that it's a midterm rental. It's a farther outside of town too. So I do think that with these midterm rentals, it's probably important to be closer to the hospitals, closer to the university in just all the businesses, like in more centrally located.
And this one isn't that way. So that's probably something we messed up a little bit on this property, but. Still, overall it works as a midterm rental. That's some great insights, Megan, about midterm rentals. Thanks for sharing that. Now, I'd love to hear it. That was your perspective on how you look for your own portfolio, but considering you've, analyzed hundreds of.
Deals as a flipper, real estate agent, an investor, what makes a good deal? And I've heard that you use the Furnished Finder stats page also known as Market Insights to help analyze a midterm rental deal. Tell us more about that. Yeah I'm an advisor for Brandon Turner's first deal program. So we're essentially teaching new investors how to get their first deal.
And with that, I've been really digging into hundreds of different markets across the country, and I love that you guys have that stats page, like you're saying. Just click on that see the demand in your area. Love that. And you can type in whatever city and then it'll say. You know how many searches in the last 12 months, and then how many units are in that area.
And what I like to do is take the searches and divide it by the units. So you get a ratio of how many searches for every one unit. And in my market, it's about 300 searches to one, and I have no vacancy problem, right? So I tell people if you have a market where you're looking at it and it's higher than that 300 to one.
You're not gonna have a problem filling those units. It might be a pricing thing. You might have to really get good pictures, be the, put your best foot forward in your listing. But if you have a nice listing, you're not gonna have a problem filling it up. If you have a market that's over that 300 searches to one, and there are some markets that are like 500, 600, 800 searches to one unit man, attack those areas because there's obviously supply demand ratios just way off.
Yeah, and I think you can open up your markets to, that you're considering to ones outside of where you live, right? You definitely, with a midterm rental, you do not have to be a local investor. You don't have to be there running every day. I know 13 of our 14 rentals are more than 800 miles away from us, so it's very doable.
Megan, are all of your properties in your portfolio local, and how do you feel about having properties that are further away? Yeah. Mine specifically are, I just wanted to go really deep in one location, and so that's what we've done. We always flip here. All of our rentals are here. We go deep in this market, but I think it would be very easy to do the midterm strategy elsewhere because honestly, I never show up to my midterm rentals.
Like I have my cleaning crew go in. She's the one that's cleaning it. Turning it, doing the linens, resetting everything, and then, refilling like our starter pack of toilet paper towels, whatever. And so I don't ever have to go look at it and she would alert me to any like small maintenance issues that I might need to send a handyman to, to go fix, but I'm not going to them.
So it didn't, doesn't really matter if it's here or a thousand miles away.
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Continuing on our theme of, what went right and what went wrong with your first midterm rentals and things that you've learned along the way what were you most proud of in your first listing or booking? I think I was most proud of how quickly it booked, like within going up on, on the sites Furnished Finder analyst, mine on Airbnb.
It was booked within one day. I was amazed we can't fill a long-term tenant that fast. Which, which made me go maybe I'm not asking enough for it. And I thought I was asking quite a lot. And then I just started increasing it in, increasing it, and really pushing like, how far can I make this go without still experiencing vacancy.
So I think we had listed originally for 1400, and now we're getting like 1950 on those same units. Like I had no idea that it was gonna be that much because we would probably rent that for nine 50 if it was a long-term rental. Yeah. I think this is important too, to understand that you can play with your rates, you can play with your pricing and everything on furnished finder very easily, and it's actually pretty important, right?
If you're new or you're trying to find your sweet spot or something, play with it, right? The market's changing all of the time, and you have. Full control of your listing and you get to do that. So it's really nice that you can stay active and like you're truly a part of your success. And you get to go in there and then you get to know that hey, if you're charging 1950 a month, like you're gonna get to collect all of that and not have a booking fee or commission taken off the top.
'cause those can add up. So quickly. So I love that you were able to do that successfully. What feedback did you get from your first guest that you hosted that, that kind of signal that you're like, okay, yeah, I'm onto something. This is working for us. So one of those first 1400 tenants end up staying for a year.
And I was definitely like, oh man, I should asked for more. And they, if you can stay long term like that. So that was definitely working. But I think one of the things that we learned this may be something we did wrong is at one point we had a tenant who was supposed to be moving out that day and she didn't.
And literally this happened twice to us on the same day. And so she had booked just an arbitrary date in the future and then forgot what date she was ending on. And we had literally, yeah, it was bad. And our cleaner shows up. Is you're not supposed to be here. And she's oh, I didn't know.
I forgot. And I'm like, I have a new tenant coming tomorrow. You have to get out. And so fortunately we were just bringing on a new MTR unit on the same property, just different building. And so we were able to bring the new tenant into that building and let her stay in that one unit. But I was like, okay, clearly my system is broken here.
Because now what we do is we reach out if they're staying for three, four months, we reach out about 30 days. In advance of their move out date and say, Hey, just friendly reminder, you're set to move out on this date. Do you wanna extend? So now we have a lot of people that are extending and then within about a week of the move out date, we remind them again, Hey, this is your move out date.
Just wanna make sure that you're moving out on this date because we are having tenants move in directly after you. And so putting in that communication plan has helped us out a lot. Yeah, that's interesting 'cause it's like it worked out too well for you. It worked out too well and she wanted to stay, but that calendar management is, if you have a lot of properties can be challenging if you have one or two properties, it's incredibly simple.
But that transparency of your availability of when people are moving in and moving out ha is really important because we wanna make sure that you're getting the right leads on Furnished finder. We wanna make sure everybody knows kinda. What's available, what's not. So how have you really honed in on your system there?
So we have, I have a VA that manages most of that process, and so we actually we run all of our businesses through Podio, which is more of like a task management software, but we built it out for our MTRs because we do have 'em listed on Furnished Finder and Airbnb. And so we want to be able to have one centralized location for that.
And then my virtual assistant is going in to Furnished Finder every day and reaching out even to the general. Inquiries. So you get direct inquiries that's specifically for our property, but you also get those general inquiries where maybe it's just somebody saying, Hey, I need a two bedroom place in Lincoln for this budget, and it matches what we might have available.
So my virtual assistant is reaching out to them immediately, usually via text, because we've seen that they usually respond better. Via text, then through the app and then really trying to lock in those tenants and get them booked with us immediately before all the other landlords are reaching out.
I have a follow up question on this topic. Yeah. That I think a lot of newer hosts, need help on this. Along with the, the calendar conversation, what's the, you and you have less than 5% vacancy. What's the largest gap you try to book in advance for a midterm rental? Oh yeah, that's good.
So we don't l allow for gaps, and that's probably why we have such small vacancy. So if we have a unit that's available on, let's say July 1st, and they wanna move in July 15th, they'll reach out. This might be, a few weeks before that time, they'll reach out and ask us. 'cause we don't do instant bookings either on Airbnb.
But anyways, they reach out, they ask us if they can move in on July 15th, and we're like, no, it's available July 1st. If you wanna book it, we'd need to move your start date to July 1st. And eight times out of 10, they'll say yes and they'll pay for those extra two weeks. Yeah, because we just don't wanna take the vacancy and there's so ma, so much demand for it that we know that we don't need to we can wait and we'll get a different booking that matches our dates a little better.
Mine ends up being two weeks. That's the most comfortable I am in booking ahead is two weeks. But if it's a month out and they're asking, then I negotiate the same way. Hey, are you willing to meet me in the middle? And, you move it in two weeks earlier or commit to two weeks earlier and I'll, push back two weeks.
And that's worked well for us. Also, Katie, I'd love to hear your feedback back on this topic. I don't think we've talked about this in a while. Yeah, we don't have a hard and fast rule. I think it's about the balance. If we're seeing a ton of demand come in we will Megan saying avoid a gap or say Hey can we start your lease a week earlier?
That being said, if it's someone who wants to stay for six or nine months and it's a really good rental rate, or maybe we're going into the winter where it's a little harder, things like that, like we're comfortable with doing. Like a two week gap or so. But I try to make it so that we can still be efficient in that two weeks.
So it's kinda okay, what can we get done in that two weeks? Can we go in and can we really do a deep dive of assessing the furniture? What needs to be replaced, what needs to be tightened? Can we get an extra deep clean in there? Can we, what maintenance have we been deferring just to make that still feel productive.
So even though it's technically vacant, you're still being efficient with the property. And if there's, maintenance stuff like servicing the furnace or the air conditioner that we can do when a tenant's not there, like it's just easier 'cause we don't have to coordinate. We try to avoid it.
We will, keep the line of communication really open though. Like I've had some people who say, Hey, like maybe it's May 1st and they're looking to book in July. It's hey, I don't typically book that far out because I'm never sure if people are going to extend however, like why don't I check in with you three weeks before your date or four weeks before your date?
'cause I'll have a better picture. It becomes a little bit easier when you have multiple properties because I can say Hey, this one doesn't. Work for you, but what about this one? Or what about this one? So you get the advantage of the shuffle. But yeah I think it's important that, again you're in control and you're never gonna get dinged on furnace trying for not having it work out.
I'm always nervous on Airbnb that if I say I don't accept this booking, then I'm gonna get like tanked and it's gonna impact us really significantly. But being in control of your business is such a value that I think. Is important in midterm rentals, it's critical, right? Because having a gap, like a three week gap is gonna be really difficult to fill.
Now you can go and you can do a short term, right? Or you can do something like that, but that doesn't work for everybody. So we need to make sure that with midterm rentals in particular, like you are control of your business and your decisions. 'cause even us three, right? All three of us have different answers and they're all great and they all work for all of our different businesses.
And I think we all have around 95% occupancy as well. Yeah. But like it's important to be like, what works in my market with my properties, with my business, how I wanna run it. So can I ask you guys a question? Ooh, fun. Okay. So in, in that vein, if it's I feel like most midterm tenants, they don't plan very far ahead.
So they may be asking about a few weeks ahead, right? But. Sometimes you get these people that are like, can I book your place six months past your gap? Do you say yes to those and then hope you fill in that weird six month time or five months, anytime I have, it's become really challenging.
So that's when I'm like, Hey and I think part of it is education because I think if it's like the travel nurses or the contractors and stuff, they know the name of the game. They know that Hey, you don't need to look for housing until. Our average book to stay window is about a month. But if I'm like a mom and I know that like I'm gonna have a gap, like I'm already panicking about December, but I don't know that, like it's not normal to book that far out.
Like I would think, hey, the more far in advance the better. Landlords probably appreciate that. So I think and I'd be interested to hear you guys' opinion and answer too, but like sometimes I'm just like, Hey, like typically we book about, three to four weeks out. Talk to me then. Yep. I think.
If I wanted to embrace short-term rentals, then I would not be hesitant to book that far in advance. But there's a couple things with midterm rentals you wanna keep in mind. Your guests oftentimes extend, so then as a hospital will host, sometimes it. Feels like you're not doing the best service for your guests when you book in advance, not knowing if they want to extend or move out.
Especially when it comes to insurance, housing, or remodels. Those are likely going to extend month to month. So I would not book out ahead for those travel nurses. I would be okay with that if I did short term because they oftentimes. Know, that they may have to move to new property or they're moving to a new assignment.
But in general, because the midterm rental strategy is less stress it only for myself, it only averages about one to four flips a year. The Furnished Finder average is 90 day stay, so around four flips a year. So yeah, I love midterm only, and therefore don't book in advance. I've been pretty much shutting it down too, because I just think.
It's would be so rare to find the perfect person that happens to fit in that gap. And for me, in my market, like our short-term regulations are pretty strict here in that if you are gonna do a short-term rental, you have to have a short-term rental permit. And I don't have to have those on the midterm rental side of things.
Which means that I can't fill in those weird gaps with a short-term rental. So I've just been saying no, but I did feel like it's like kind of rude, like they're trying to pre-plan and I'm like, I don't know, check back like a few weeks out and just, I don't know. They go somewhere else. I'm sure though.
Yeah it's tough. It's tough because again I'm like, I don't wanna turn down a booking, but you don't wanna make it harder in the future. So I take I'm like, I just try to let them know Hey, booking a month out for this type of thing is like plenty of notice. And I don't know, I think like for me that'd be a relief.
Okay, cool. I don't need to deal with this until then. But it's tricky 'cause there's so many different situations. So this is a good feedback. All right. I wanna dive more into mistakes 'cause this is such a cool spin that we have on this topic today. We don't get to talk about it enough.
I was thinking the other day, I'm like, we all always talk about like our successes and the great things we've done, but we can learn so much. If not the most from the mistakes or the mishaps that we've had as well. So tell us about any tenant screening or listing mishaps or red flags. Maybe how you made your lease or something like that that you made, in your early days with MTR.
Yeah, that's interesting. We haven't had a whole lot of problems with our midterm rental tenants like we do. Credit check and background check from with rent ready. And then we do all of our rent collections through there. Unless they book on Airbnb, then obviously it goes just straight from there.
But we've had really good luck with our guests. One thing that happened in the beginning though, is we moved in three midterm rental tenants into one building. And within two days, the sewer line backed up in this building and so we had to move them all to a hotel room. Get the sewer line replaced and then move them all back into the property.
And then the sewer line backed up again because there was actually multiple sewer lines on the same building. And so we had to move them out again and fix the sewer line. And so it became a big expensive thing. And I just felt, oh my gosh, these people are gonna think I'm absolutely terrible host. But it was just right after construction.
And so we weren't using the plumbing, like we had no idea about that. So definitely one thing to fix that is when you're doing a remodel, we do now like a home inspection, but just post-construction, home inspection. And they don't have to do a full report for us, but I want 'em checking out everything so that we can address those little issues that maybe our tenants are gonna find and so we can address 'em before we get tenants in.
This I just love your input, Megan. So many great wins, challenges that you've overcome. You're not new to this game. You've been a Furnished Finder host for over five years. You've been flipping since 2016, I think. And we're aiming for around. 40 flips this year, I think. So you're not new and you also have a design business.
So were was there with midterm rentals. Anything you underestimated on the furnishing costs or furnishing the space, anything like that? Yeah, so we own a staging company. We stage about a hundred houses a year. So that was probably something that made it easier to jump into this space. 'cause I was like, if it doesn't work out, we hate doing it.
We'll just take the furniture and all the stuff into the staging inventory, it'll be fine. But with that. I think we use different furniture in our Furnished Finders usually than staging. We like to use furniture for the staging company that's very lightweight and doesn't necessarily have to be lived on.
And in our furnished finder, we wanna have more solid furniture that lasts a little longer with that, added traffic, if you will. But we use actually buy almost all of our furniture off of Amazon and then just have it delivered directly to the property. And then have my girl who does all my stagings go in and set it up, build it.
And so it's very easy for her to set it up because she's already in that mode of, that's what she does every day. It just makes it very simple to get it delivered right to the property. We could probably furnish a place for about $4,000 for a one bedroom and $5,000 for a two bedroom. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Once you've really honed it in and pick the things that you're gonna invest in, right? We've talked about that with our episode with Minoan, how it's choose the things you wanna invest in that are gonna get more wear and tear. One pro tip I have for everybody that I don't think we've talked about yet is if you're looking on Amazon or you're looking on Wayfair, maybe you're using a link from a no and something like that.
If you're looking at, let's say a dresser search, the result, the reviews for easy to assemble. That has been clutch for us because you can find a five star dresser that takes six hours to assemble, or you can find a five star dresser that takes 45 minutes to assemble. And people are very honest about that.
That has saved us out like countless hours of work of just okay, six people in these reviews say that it's easy to assemble. Boom, that's the one. It's such a game changer too. Like we did that on our first property. We bought three units worth of these same dressers, so six dressers.
And I walk in after my assistant, Natasha, she's been working on this for all day long, and I'm like, I. So what are you doing? She's I'm just still building this one dresser. I'm like, you gotta speed it up or something. It's taken eight hours to build this one dresser. Yeah, but it was just, the dresser was incredibly challenging.
Yeah. And an electric screwdriver with the Allen wrench bits that will also save you hours. I joke that we should have kept like an empty peanut butter jar and every time we get a piece of furniture with an Allen wrench in it, toss it in there. And we like just to see how tar, how tall the jar would be now, it'd be pretty impressive.
Yeah. Love that. I would love to hear some lessons you've learned. If there's anything that starting over you would change or maybe you nailed it and you didn't wanna change anything. So what do you think about that? Yeah on one of our first properties, it's a one bedroom. On each unit, duplex top and bottom unit.
And one of the units, I completely remodeled it the kitchen had a 20 inch stove, so I made it a full-sized stove oven combo, and it didn't have a dishwasher, so I added dishwasher. We ended up putting like maybe. 15, $20,000 into the remodel of it. And then I thought, it'd be a good experiment as if we just did nothing to the upstairs, so we did nothing.
It has like green linoleum. It still has this old, probably older than me, 20 inch stove, and it rents out just as good as the other one. And I'm like. That was a waste of 15 grand, so I think it's not short term rentals where maybe you need to make it like so bougie and like really cute and just overdo it.
It's like needs to be clean and functional and it's less about the top notch kind of design aspect. Yeah, I think like old is fine as long as it's clean. Yeah. And it's not cluttered and the location matters a lot. And you're presenting yourself as a professional landlord, even if you have one or two properties.
You can still make your presentation really nice with your photos and the way you communicate. I think, that's interesting. I'm like thinking about my own portfolio now. And you're right. Like it. Doesn't seem to really matter. These travelers care about location. They care about safety.
They care about convenience and parking. And is there a washer and dryer or how far is it from work? Those things are much, much more important than does it have a quartz countertop? I just have one more question for both of you actually. You, you are both married, have kids at least one real estate professional in your household.
I think for Megan, I think both of you're real estate professionals. Katie of course has her wonderful W2 as our marketing director of Furnished Finder. So with those crazy schedules what did you get right and wrong with adding kids to the mix with your real estate portfolio and midterm rentals?
Man, I got, I had little kids right when we were really growing our businesses. And that is tough. And we had 'em very close together. So we had a newborn, a one-year-old and a three-year-old at the same time. We were in like grind mode and it was real hard. One thing that we did was we brought on a full-time nanny.
And I know a lot of women are like, oh, I don't wanna do that. Or it's. They look down on that maybe, and that's fine. But like for us it was, we needed somebody there from seven in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon that would do laundry and like meal prep for us and watch the kids and let us work.
Because before that we were. I was strapping babies to my chest and like running miter saws and that's not good either. And so then that full-time nanny really allowed us to, like, when we're at home, we can be fully present with our kids from three till seven o'clock or whatever when they go to bed.
And that was a game changer for us. Yeah. I'll our kids were a little older when we got started. I wanna say our youngest was. I don't know, six, maybe The best thing we've done is let them be involved. And this'll go for my nephews too, because they're also involved. It's for us, it's like a family business with my side of the family.
But they love to like assemble furniture. They love to try to arrange furniture. Sometimes that means that they arrange it. And then when they leave, we quickly put it the way we actually want it, but making them like, feel involved. One of my nephews is very proud to build all of the accent chairs or all of the lamps, right?
They love throwing the cardboard off of the patio to get it closer to the dumpster. Like just getting them involved and letting them see that, it's a lot of hard work, but it's very fulfilling when you're, when you get done and you get to look at this and you're like, someone's gonna move in here and they're gonna work at the hospital and serve our community.
Or this is for a family that's in between houses and they're gonna live here. So putting that like into reality, I think a lot of kids, even my full-time job, right? Like marketing, they don't actually know what that means or how it impacts things. So this is a very tangible thing that like the older kids can relate to and they can really see what you're doing.
The challenges are schedules, right? There's only so many hours in the day and it is hard. It's hard, especially like once you get to a certain point to keep growing. But yeah it's really fulfilling to like. Get to enjoy that with your kids. I lied. I have one more question and we'll wrap it up.
Those were fantastic answers. If you are also a real estate professional raising kids or something else in the episode stuck out stuck out to you, put it in the comments. We would love to just. Participate in your midterm rental journey as well. Any questions you have success stories. We wanna be a part of those.
So to wrap us up, of course, make sure and let us know how you'd like people to connect with you. And then what advice would you give someone starting their first midterm rental since you help analyze deals for first time investors all the time. Yeah, so I think that the way that your listing looks is probably one of the most important things.
You wanna make sure that it's built out professionally, it looks good, it sounds good, but the pictures and getting professional pictures are so important, we had a new student. She's I'm not getting anybody booking this unit. What's going on? I'm like, girl, you got, you don't even have your pictures hung up.
They're like sitting on the floor. Looks like you halfway set this up. Like your bed is made just like haphazardly. Like you gotta tuck it in tight, make it nice like you would see a hotel room right where it. Crisp and clean and folded well. And then get those professional pictures, not the camera phone pictures.
It's gonna send the message to your prospective tenants that like, I am a professional, I am managing this professionally. It's going to be clean. When you show up, like you ever showed up to a Airbnb and you turn back the sheets and there's like hair, you're like, oh, I don't wanna be here. And they have, I'm sure, 'cause they've visited so many of these, so they wanna know and feel like when I show up, this is gonna be professionally managed. It's gonna be a safe spot, it's gonna be clean. If there's a issue with a hvac, they're gonna get on it right away. And you show that to them by setting up your listing. Really love it. That's so great. And how would you like guests or listeners to connect with you?
And of course, it'll be in the show notes as well. Yeah, they can reach out to me through my Instagram, which is the Tady investor with underscores between the words. But yeah, that's me. Awesome. It's been a fantastic episode. Thanks for sharing your wins, your challenges, and we'll catch you again next time with more monthly midterm rental success stories, failures, all of the above.
Have a great day. Bye everybody. Hi. Thank you.