Most landlords feel stuck between two imperfect choices:
Long-term rentals offer stability, but come with lower cash flow, limited flexibility, and year-long lease commitments that can delay your ability to adapt.
Short-term rentals promise flexibility, but often mean constant turnover, higher costs, regulatory headaches, and inconsistent income.
But there’s a third strategy that’s gaining traction, and it may offer the right balance for today’s housing market.
It’s called monthly rentals (also known as mid-term rentals), and it’s a growing segment that can deliver 30–50% higher rental income than traditional leases, without the chaos of nightly turnover.
In a recent episode of Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson (opens in new tab), Chad Carson sat down with Jeff Hurst, CEO of Furnished Finder (opens in new tab), to break down how midterm rentals work and why landlords are shifting to this high-cash-flow, low-hassle model.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is a monthly rental?
Monthly rentals are furnished properties leased for 28 days or more, catering to people who are temporarily living in an area for work, relocation, or life transitions, not leisure or vacation.
These monthly furnished rentals are ideal for:
Corporate workers or temporary contractors
Traveling nurses and healthcare professionals
Families relocating or displaced by insurance claims
Graduate students and university faculty
Unlike Airbnb-style short stays, these tenants are typically professionals who sign a lease and treat your home like a temporary residence, not a weekend getaway.
Why more landlords are choosing monthly rentals
Jeff compares the current monthly rental landscape to where Airbnb was in 2010: early, under‑served, and full of opportunity.
Here’s why it’s gaining traction:
Higher income than long-term rentals (often 30–50% more)
Fewer turnovers than short-term rentals (tenants stay 3–6 months on average)
Less pushback from neighbors and cities (fewer (if any) regulations because monthly rental tenants do not create the same nuisance effect of short-term rental tenants).
Untapped demand across medical, corporate, academic, and relocation sectors.
With over 300,000 listings, Furnished Finder is already serving this demand, but many cities still lack quality inventory. That’s where small, independent landlords can step in.
Monthly vs. short-term vs. long-term rentals: a quick comparison
Feature | Long-Term | Short-Term | Monthly (Mid-Term) |
Lease Length | 12+ months | 1–7 nights | 30+ days |
Furnished? | No | Yes | Yes |
Turnovers per Year | 1–2 | 40+ | 3–4 |
Management Complexity | Low | High | Low-Moderate |
Income Potential | Steady | Variable | High + Stable |
Tenant Type | Locals | Tourists | Professionals, Families |
Regulation Risk | Low | High | Low |
How much more can you earn with monthly rentals?
A common question from landlords: How much more can I actually make?
Furnished Finder rule of thumb:
30–50% higher rent than traditional leases
Example:
Long-term rent: $1,800/month
Mid-term rent: $2,400–$2,700/month
Your total income depends on your location, property size, and tenant type. But even after furnishing costs, many landlords see ROI in under a year, then enjoy ongoing cash flow gains.
Where do monthly rentals work best?
Unlike short-term rentals that thrive in beach towns or tourist hubs, monthly rentals perform best near:
Hospitals and medical centers
Universities and academic hubs
Major highways and commuter corridors
Areas with ongoing construction or data center development
Extended stay hotels (use them as demand indicators!)
Many landlords find success by renting out smaller 1–2 bedroom units close to their own homes — making self-management more realistic and affordable.
Is vacancy a risk with monthly rentals?
Not as much as you might think.
Top-performing monthly landlords report:
~95% occupancy
3-week average lease-up time
Many tenants extend beyond original stay
Why? Because you’re offering a solution people genuinely need — not a luxury splurge. You also get advance notice when tenants leave (typical 30-day terms), making it easier to plan.
Can I get started without buying a new property?
Yes! Here are three low-risk ways to test monthly rentals:
1. Try rental arbitrage
Lease a property long-term and furnish it for monthly stays. You earn the spread without buying real estate.
2. Rent out a room or ADU
Start with what you have, especially in high-demand areas.
3. List it before you furnish
Post your unit on Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) without furniture and offer to furnish it for the first tenant. This helps you learn what tenants actually need without big upfront costs.
How do I list on Furnished Finder?
Furnished Finder operates more like Zillow or Craigslist than Airbnb:
You pay a flat $199/year listing fee
You keep 100% of your rent
Furnished Finder offers you online screening, leasing, and payment tools
Furnished Finder connects you directly with quality leads
This model gives you more control and profitability, while still reaching an audience of motivated renters.
Tips to maximize your success on Furnished Finder
Be responsive — most tenants book with the first landlord who replies
Use high-quality photos — listings with professional images perform better
Make it pet-friendly — monthly tenants are coming to live, which means they aren’t leaving their furry friends behind
List amenities clearly (blackout curtains, parking, laundry, etc.)
Keep your calendar and pricing up to date
Is this the right strategy for you?
Monthly rentals are ideal for:
Independent landlords wanting higher income with less hassle
Owners in regulation-heavy STR markets
Real estate investors looking to boost cash flow in high interest rate environments
Anyone who wants more control over tenant quality and lease terms
If that sounds like you — it’s worth exploring.
Next steps: how to learn more or get started
Listen to the full Coach Carson podcast episode (opens in new tab)
Visit FurnishedFinder.com/stats (opens in new tab) to see how your local monthly rental market is performing.
Monthly rentals aren’t a trend — they’re a solution.
For today’s mobile workforce, affordability crunch, and investor who values peace of mind — this is the opportunity sitting in plain sight.
Transcript:
Most landlords think they only have two options. The stability of long-term rentals or the highinccome but high headaches of Airbnb. But what if there was a third option where you could earn 50% more than a traditional lease without dealing with nightly turnover or guest drama? The strategy is called midterm rentals and we're diving deep into how you can make it work in this episode. [Music] Welcome to the podcast Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson. I'm your host Chad Carson. You can also call me Coach Carson. And in this show, I teach you how to use real estate investing to achieve financial freedom so you can spend your time doing more of what matters. Now, let's get to my conversation with Jeff Hurst, who is the CEO of Furnished Finder, the biggest player in the midterm rental market. So, Jeff, I was thinking it'd be fun to just do sort of a first principles of midterm rentals. I think a lot of people in our audience either have dabbled in it or are on the fence. They're interested in it. So, I'd love for you to start with maybe just what is a midterm rental? Let's let's let's define it a little bit and then also for those who are considering it or on the fence about it, why why is this a compelling strategy? Why why are people looking at this more? Yeah. So, the easiest definition of a midterm rental is like what does somebody search for on Google? They overwhelmingly search for a monthly furnished rental. And so, you know, the definition is typically 28 or more days. It's a uh it's furnished housing. And the distinction between a midterm and a short-term, aside from obviously being a longer amount of time, it's really about the tenant base and the way you book it. And so midterm rentals, it's more of a uh professional workingclass occasion. And so, uh, when you think about Furnished Finder, you know, and I used to be the president of Vrbo, you know, Vrbo was almost all leisure. Airbnb predominantly leisure, predominantly shorter stays, you know, 3 to seven days. Uh, Furnished Finder's average day is 90 days. And from a tenant type perspective, the top use case is corporate and that could be uh more of a skilled trade like building a data center or high-rise or it could be a consultant or somebody traveling for small business. That's a third of the total tenants. 25% are healthcare, primarily traveling nurses, and that's what Furnished Finder got famous for. 20% are relocating families or displaced families. And that's the fastest growing tenant type we have. Think of that as someone's moving from Seattle to Austin. They don't know what neighborhood they want to be in. they're going to rent for 6 months, check out the school district, check out the neighborhood, and be sure they buy in the right place. Or maybe they had a plumbing issue and they've got to relocate for a while. And then the fourth primary type is academic, and it's typically grad students and professors. They move around a lot. They don't typically have a lot of money for furniture yet. And so they choose to rent. What all that means, you've got this longer tenure, longer duration, and you're also booking with a traditional lease. You're getting paid typically a person, you know, with a check. And so it feels a little bit more like the long-term booking process, uh, but with some of the economic benefits of short-term rentals, mainly that you've got a higher yield. And the last thing I'd offer on it is that the, um, the the biggest distinction is like leisure really thrives, you know, beaches, waterfront, mountain, ski, ski out, and then core urban, you know, close to your tourist attractions. Um, think about midterm is thriving near great schools, universities, hospitals, and commuter corridors. That means the price point is often a lot more approachable. And because it's a smaller travel party size, more like two people than five people, you can actually use a much smaller footprint. And so the cash on cash return, I think, is probably superior to short-term rentals in many cases, but you're not getting quite as much of the appreciation or usage benefit. That was actually the best definition of midterm rentals I've ever heard. So, I'm not surprised being that you're the CEO of Furnished Finder. But there there's a couple things that stand out to me. one, many people define it by the length of stay, but the defining it based on this entire different market of people who my my read of what you just said is that it's people who are working and traveling as opposed to leisure and traveling. Is it is it as simple as that? Is that too that oversimpl simplification? Add a slice. You're working or living instead of traveling. And the living is important because there are you know a lot of people the occasion is not to go work. It's to live closer to family when your grandparents or it's to live in a home because you've been displaced because of that. You're not really traveling. You're actually renting in the same neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's a totally different approach in terms of I I want to get to some of the regulations and things like that here in a little bit. But, you know, some of the bigger complaints about short-term rentals is that you have people living in neighborhoods, permanent residents, and they're just they're just at odds with some of the usage of people who are in a short-term rental. It's just a different atmosphere. It's a different use. A lot of what I'm hearing here though is the people who are staying there. Traveling nurses, relocation, insurance, you know, housing, people are working on projects, they are all living there. The only difference is instead of living there, the the neighbor might have been living there for 10 years, they're living there for 3 months or 6 months. And but it's a pretty similar lifestyle. Yeah. So much of my career at Vrbo was, you know, being subpoenaed or testifying or working with governments who were trying to regulate away short-term rentals. Like I wholeheartedly admit I think short-term rentals have gotten a bad rap from regulatory authorities. But like the gig is up. Like we're not going to go back and win that fight for short-term rentals. And what's different about what I call the not in my backyard movement versus midterm rentals. This is a neighborhood asset. You are thrilled if there's a midterm rental in your neighborhood and your best friend's house just had the roof catch on fire and they can move into that midterm rental and their kids can still play with your kids and the family's still part of the community. You're also thrilled if a family who's thinking about moving to your neighborhood and buying but is on the fence can rent there. And it I think it actually helps with appreciation and helps the community. And interestingly, and one of the thesis I've got for investors is it's like these houses don't have to have pickle ball courts, high quality finishouts, and like everything covered. It needs to be convenient and comfortable. You can turn a tear down into a mid-term rental by making it liveable instead of treating it as okay, this huge capital project. And I think that's what can make the cash on cash return interesting in some of these different neighborhoods. Yeah. And I I still like short-term rentals and I've been in the game and I know you've told me off offline that you're also in the short-term rental game. But I I think one of the interesting trends there is that there's there's this arms race of amenities that you have to have and andor locations. And what that really means from a practical standpoint, from a profit standpoint for small investors is that you got to pay more money. Like you got to spend more money in order to to play. And I I think that what I'd really I want to I want to go one more place on the the higher level, but I really want to dig into the business model for for small investors and the the ideal properties and the metrics and the numbers, but but one more question I think that'll just be interesting on the high level that you have a great perspective on and your your background is what what I found interesting about Airbnb was it was almost like, you know, 20 years ago there were people staying in hotels and there's a few vacation rentals, but it almost created, you know, a new market. I don't know what the actual numbers are, but what I'm think I'm curious about is like from what you've seen of midterm rentals and this description you just gave, is this a market that's always been there but has not been tapped? Is this a market that we're sort of creating through technology? I'm just curious, number one, like what your thoughts are on that market? And then number two, what's the total total addressable market here? Because a lot of people who are going to choose to do midterm rentals are sort of partnering with Furnished Finder to be in the business and invest in furnishings. And so what's what's the growth prospects look like for the this market as a whole? totally. So I think the the analogy to call it 15 years ago short-term rental is almost perfect. Um and so you know if you flash back for people who may have been investing that long ago and that that's when I joined home away and so that's kind of when my like depth in the category begins. Um and really you know home away and verb were a little earlier than Airbnb in many senses. It's like they created the category but Airbnb obviously ran away with it. the um the things I'd highlight in terms of like where we are um you know short-term rentals in 2010 uh much smaller industry primarily professionally managed primarily uh beach and mountain there wasn't this notion of really urban short-term rentals and there wasn't as much availability and widespread supply as there is today. It mainly competed on price versus resorts and it had a huge advantage because it was way cheaper to operate these homes at the time. Over time, that price advantage compressed because short-term rentals have gotten more expensive on a nightly rate over the last 15 years, probably by at least 2x, maybe more. And the quality of service has had to expand in order to not only attract more people to the category, but honestly to compete with hotels even better. And then additionally, there was a lot of regulatory capture and pressure from the hotel lobby to make it harder to be a short-term in particular in urban areas. And so the value prop um you know 15 years ago was really really it was such a better value and such a lower price point that that's what we were selling at home away and that's really what Airbnb was selling with rooms. If you think about where we are today on the midterm side and um you know as as context Furnished Finder has about 300,000 listings that are midterm only rentals. Uh it's a lot bigger than most people think. And candidly when I was uh running a large part of Expedia and Vrbo I had no idea this site existed. blows my mind that there was this site out there kind of like hiding in plain sight. Uh we think we've got almost twice as many 30-day plus rentals as Airbnb and so we're actually probably the biggest player in the space and we know we have uh about four times as many as Zillow. The way the midterm rental industry is evolving is that right now it's you know similar to 2010 it's primarily this professional category and so you it's been corporate rentals. It's been these big multifamilies that have a handful of their inventory corporate managed typically kind of a stale set of inventory and very expensive because they're selling to Google and they're selling to insurance and so there's been a lot of opportunity to really take price and what's happening driven by furnishinder and you know to a lesser extent the dynamics of short-term on Airbnb furos are getting really involved here and so the for rent by owner market is starting to explode which is creating a lot more breadth and highquality lower price inventory and midterm rentals That feels like what happened from 2010 to call it 2018 and short-term is you're starting to see more and more supply expand. And as that happens, you're starting to see the use cases for tenants expand. 3 years ago, we were 75% traveling nurses. It was the pandemic, so maybe it was overstated, but now we're 25% traveling nurses. People are using us for film crews. People are using us to live. Like, and a lot of it's just an affordability and housing crisis. But those dynamics are the macro trends that are shaping why I think midterminals is going to go, you know, I think we'll go from 300,000 to 500,000 with no issues. And along that path, it'll professionalize just like short-term did and like long-term has done also. But there's some quirks to it. You need to borrow a little bit from each side. But you're going to see this inventory type start to expand. And I think you're going to see more and more tenants choose to be mid-term tenants, but they actually live there and just start to stay longer in furnished housing because furniture is a pretty crappy investment. Like it's kind of like a car. As soon as you walk off the lot, it's worth less, but you've got emotional attachment and switching costs to move it around with you. And so I think there'll be a lot more people that live this way. And that'll really help the category grow, you know, for closer to a decade than a year. Yeah. Very helpful. I'm wondering, you mentioned the trend of that the relocation was one of your fastest growing or the your fastest growing trend, midterm rentals. Are there any other trends or insights you've seen from a higher level statistics that might be helpful just for the the operators who are think who are getting into midterm rentals? Yeah, I think that the um I'd start from a standpoint of like who am I competing with and what are their options? And so, you know, the tenant groups I described um you know, most of them the like historical first point of call is like an extended stay America hotel. All right. So, you've got a 550 foot basically efficiency studio with a mini fridge, no oven, and it's, let's call it, $70 a night. So, for $2,100 a month, you can get an extended stay America. Or for $1,600 a month, you can have a one-bedroom apartment on Furnished Finder with fully kitted out amenities. And so, you start to think about like, what's my competitive use case? And then you can do things like drive by an extended stay America and see who's there. Like most of them have trucks with logos on them and talk to people. But what you'll see is more and more construction workers are shifting into Furnished Finder. Our biggest trend this year is data centers. You know, it's not like oh wow moment. Data centers are overwhelmingly in rural places without highquality housing and hotel options and they need to house skilled trade to build them. We see a lot of this with you know skilled trade compression in the US. People need to move these workers around to build skyrises. So that's an interesting category where we're seeing growth. And the other one on the relocation, I'd combine relocation with basically long-term tenency on the book ends. And I'd say the boomers, and I don't mean that pjoratively, like you know, I'm Gen X and I and I see the trend with um with the um uh with the era above me and they're basically choosing to live closer to grandkids and choosing to be more portable than you know I ever anticipated. And then, you know, the generation beneath me, the millennials and even gen um Gen Z, they're choosing to live in these because they want to have the freedom to move around for professional use cases, for personal use cases, and they want more flexibility to be successful. I think that's going to really change the way investors look at it because there's these relatable use cases. You know, it's like invest in what you know. Do you know a parent who's done this? Do you know a child who's done this? Do you know somebody working in your neighborhood who would be better off in, you know, a one-bedroom you manage instead of a Marriott or an extended stay America or an Airbnb with fees? Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know if you call it this internally, but like the whole digital nomad movement, this is something my wife and I have lived abroad. We lived in Spain, we lived in Ecuador, and for us, you know, we were working abroad. I had my real estate back at home. my and so having a place you could go to that was furnished that even internationally is even more important not to have to deal with a lot of the international leases and that kind of I mean it was you know I think there's a huge space there as as people get more mobile in the workforce and having remote work I mean that that's a whole different trend yeah and interestingly it's it is both the it is it is the remote work and it's the physical work like a lot of the physical work you know whether it's a sales call or construction requires you to be somewhere and so I I I think it's both and um you know an interesting dynamic for it. And you know, part of like the Furnished Finder thesis is when we were starting home away, we were subscription model. It was I think it was like $400 on average for a listing per year and you know, it was disruptive and a high value play. Airbnb moved to a commission model and really, you know, took off with the market because it was free to list and everybody got paid much more like an OTAA. There's an interesting dynamic here of like, you know, most Americans are in a place where they're concerned about economic stability and there's an affordability crisis. If you're making $80,000 a year, uh, which is above the median income in the US, and booking on Airbnb nine months out of the year, you're losing almost two weeks of take-home pay and platform fees. Like, you're willing to do work to go take back two weeks of your take-home pay. On the long-term side, you don't have as much capture. You know, it's more like a month's fee for a long term, but they don't have the inventory we have. And so, our disruption is actually this throwback model of a subscription where you pay $179 a year and we're not in the transaction. There are no fees because it helps these tenants get the housing they need and the landlords be creative about how they provide it. Yeah. From an operator standpoint, we have that if we we pay your fee and then we can either price it lower in order to compete or just keep more profit. It makes it a better deal for us to pay keep re let's say there's a 15% commission in there. You know, we suggest share at least five with the tenant so it's cheaper. But then also you can make more money yourself and have your own lease, your own payment method. Like there's all these different benefits that go along with it and you know the tenants often want to actually see the place like you know a FaceTime walkthrough or visit in person and that's not possible with a commission model because you need it to be opaque so that you don't go outside the system. Yeah. Well, I think this is a good segue to kind of open up the business model and so let's think about it from the the small operator the small I call them the small and mighty investors. the people who listen to this and and so if I I always like to start with like the ideal um buy box is what we call it where you both the location and the type of property. So I'm wondering if you have any insights from looking behind the scenes of the people who are successful as midterm rental people. What what are the if you had to draw a picture of an ideal location from a macro standpoint, like a regional standpoint, and then zooming all the way into within your town, within that region, what are the places within town, the amenities, the locations that really that we would, if we could hit the bullseye on a midterm rental you would probably recommend? Yeah. And and this is a, you know, I'll start with the caveat that it is not necessarily a buy box. You know, it could actually be a master lease box. And that part feels a little bit more like original Airbnb. And that's why I think this is, you know, for that um small and mighty investor in particular who's going from zero to one. Uh I think 0ero to one is way easier in mid-term rental than short-term rental. And here's why. I think first of all, midterm rentals are most commonly near where you live. So self-managing is easier. You know, I have three vacation rentals. The first one I bought was with friends. It was $485,000 in 2013. It was a big stretch. It's an hour and a half from my house and it was a huge pain in the ass for a decade. We made a ton of money, but like it's just a ton of work. And if you can start with the midterm rental that's five or 10 minutes from your house, you're just making self-managing that much easier because you know who the trades are. You can do things yourself and you can manage it yourself. The reason the arbitrage model works well is because it's very common to have a sub lease opportunity with a master lease. And so if you go take out a two-year master lease on a one or twobedroom and then have the right to subleasase it, you're really just paying for furniture upfront instead of having a down payment or trying to come up with capital and financing. So, that's the first thing I'd say is that you can get in more creatively, whether it's arbitrage or also worth noting of our over 300,000 listings, 60,000 are room rentals. A lot of people just rent out rooms. And if you're renting out a room in your house, you know, it's more like a co-living or house hacking situation. It's another way to start acrewing capital so you can go execute your first buy. Now getting into Yeah, I I'm going to I I love where we're going with that, but just for people who haven't heard of arbitrage or master leasing, it's one of my favorite strategies in real estate. I don't think it's used often enough, but I just want to add on to what you said because I think you did a good job of just saying most people think you have to buy a property that but you can also negotiate from existing owners who maybe maybe they're a long-term rental owner, maybe they're a short-term rental owner who's just kind of disgruntled, but you could go to this this owner and negotiate a long-term lease, like a two-year, three-year lease, and then negotiate the right to subleasase it, meaning you're kind of a sandwich in between the long-term owner and the person who's going to do your midterm rental. And so just is it's a really interesting opportunity because like you said, you don't necessarily have to come up with a huge down payment. You could come up maybe with a security deposit or and you know just you know prepay some rent or something. So it's like we're talking like thousands of dollars instead of you know tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in some some location. So it's a it's a way to get in the business much more approachable to be able to do an arbitrage or a master lease than just putting your plopping your money down and buying the property. and and and you know it it it has most of the great characteristics of reward from a short-term rental with fewer of the risk characteristics because if you get into an arbitrage model and it doesn't work out, what's your downside? Long-term rent it. Like you can underwrite these deals as a long-term rental and then treat any midterm rental opportunity as, you know, the gravy on top or the cream so that you can make even more return. But your fallback plan is typically a little bit more robust than the fallback plan of a short-term rental which you know has different different set of concerns. So go going back to the buy box. Um here's where I'd say is most different. So remember the tenant types I talked about corporate healthcare relocating families and academics. You don't get to serve all of them. You know you you need to focus on like what's the one you think you know best or that's most suited for your area and how do you serve them? You might get two of them, you know, but you're probably not going to serve all of them. When you look at the national level at our inventory, over 300,000 listings, 60,000 are rooms. So, let's take the rooms and put them off to the side. More of a co-l livingiving strategy. Of the remainder, 70% are two bedrooms or less. And so, you know, you're typically talking about a little over two tenants. Uh you're frequently talking about an individual traveler. Um and so what you're looking at is a smaller footprint. The smaller footprint means you don't have to spend as much money. You know, this isn't a fourbedroom on 3A. You know, this is a often a duplex or a quadplex, which gives you some different interesting opportunities where maybe you live in half of a duplex and rent out the other side and that's how you help to subsidize. And so, you're typically looking at two bedrooms or less. You're looking at a way more efficient buildout compared to short-term rentals. You know, we're typically saying $5 to $7 a square foot as your cost to furnish and get this thing ready for a midterm render. And then the other appealing characteristic from a buy box perspective is start to think about like what's the value of your own time. You know, I mentioned our lakehouse that we were self-managing. Like I spent a lot of time on that in the early years getting it right, dealing with renters, figuring out how to do turnovers 40 times a year remotely. It was just it was a it was a big tax. You're talking about doing four turnovers a year and potentially doing it within a few miles of your house. And so the potential for this to feel, I'm not going to say passive, but more passive than your short-term rental inventory is actually pretty high on that return profile. And so it's a smaller purchase price. It is less money on outfitting. And if you choose to self-manage, it's easier. If you choose not to self-manage, the rates for property management are typically lower. So on the short-term side, I'd say standard is 25% of rent, but then there's a plus plus with fees. And so the taxes are in there and then you're getting charged service fees and cleaning fees. In my experience, usually about 40% of what the tenant pays in a short-term rental goes to the property manager or regulatory authority. That number is going to be more like 15% when you get into midterm rentals because there's less turnover. There's not tax on 30-day plus rentals almost everywhere. and you don't have the same type of burdens of property management because you're not in the hospitality industry so much as the landlord industry. That's very helpful. And so just to kind of dig in on the the locations. So I'm I'm assuming that especially if you choose one of those uh strategies like traveling nurses are going to want to be near hospitals, medical centers. That's that's pretty obvious, I guess. So let's take that example, but I also want to think about construction workers and other people too. Like what what's the most important thing for them? like for for them like even within Furnished Finder if I have six listings that I'm looking at and I want to be the one that's the most competitive what what is that nurse looking at is it the fact that it's just closest to the hospital is it close to the Starbucks like are there some things you can kind of enlight us enlighten us about with that you know um for nurses top considerations many of them travel with pets you know close to 50% and so you know you're traveling alone some nurses do travel in pairs but you're frequently traveling alone and you're you know you're obvious you're frequently bringing a dog or a cat so being pet friendly is a huge benefit for how you attract uh lowcost upgrades like blackout drapes, noise machines, huge upgrade because they often work off shifts. Many of them work nights and sleep days. And then I'd say whether it's walkability or parking, I'd call it accessibility. You know, ideally you've got dedicated parking if you're going to be more of a commute or you're in a walkable zone. Those would be the top things. Uh they do cook a lot for themselves, but it's less of the um short-term rental. I've got to have everything to prepare a Thanksgiving feast and more of like I've got to have everything that are the basics to go make quick meals and be ready. You know, it's great to provide some Tupperware. It's great to provide nice knives, but you're not investing nearly as much, but you do want it to be there. And we encourage our landlords to be prepared for, hey, just tell the tenant if if you forgot something and they need it, ask you. and then you can provide it for them and kind of surprise and delight along the way. But use that to build up your inventory instead of at the beginning trying to brainstorm what's everything I might need because I can't afford a bad review. There's only four tenants a year. The bad review penalty dynamics not nearly as draconian as what you'd see in short term. And so that's kind of like the filter way to look at what's happening with healthcare. Now let's take corporate. Corporate two use cases. I think the easiest is like think about where there's construction. How close can you be to construction? What are the alternatives available for that? Often construction is happening outside of urban city center. A lot of it's happening the data center is a smaller town. And so like that's use case one. Use case two I'd say how do you get close to a commuter corridor? Where are highways intersecting? Where is there easy accessibility to on-ramps? And I think that's a good one of like where are the extended stay hotels? Assume someone is doing a lot of smart analysis to figure out where to put those. And if you can be within, you know, a half mile, a few blocks of those, you're probably on to something because they don't make a ton of underwriting mistakes and you can really piggyback on, I'm going to go sell against them. I'm going to be 30% cheaper and provide 30% more value and win if I can just figure out the right spot nearby. Universities would be pretty similar to hospitals. Um, and I think that's where there's most frequently overlap. you know, a traveling early, you know, traveling non-tenured professor probably does potentially have something in common with a traveling nurse and there's often medical facilities located on campuses. Yeah. So, the university's one is actually very personal to me. Like, uh, some of my recent episodes have been about we've we've had a little bit of an over supply over building apartments and houses have been more rentals on the market. So, I have unusually like a couple vacancies right now and we're in the middle of the fall like, "All right, what are we going to do with this?" So midterm rental is definitely I I consider short-term rental, but the the the cost of outfitting also the regulation in my town, you can only have 25 rentals per year, day rental days per year per licensing regulations. So it's like, all right, short-term rentals off the table. Midterminal is very interesting, though. And I've not I've not dabbled in it at all with traveling professors with, you know, I've always done 12-month leases and just said, "No, no, short terminal." So mid terminal is a really compelling use case in my town, and I haven't I'm going to test it out. So that'll be interesting. Glad to hear it. So the other thing I want to go to like so location obviously is going to be dependent on the the customer you're you're going after hospitals corporate headquarters I really like the the shortcut of following extended extended stay hotels and kind of using that as a shortcut. I'm wondering when when we go to the once you have your property I want to talk about the profitability and the pricing of this. You had mentioned in the very beginning that one of the core benefits of midterm rentals compared to long-term rentals is that you might be able to get a premium on rent. I'm wondering if do you have a rule of thumb in terms of if you know, for example, I have a single family house that a long-term rental will pay 1,800 bucks for. That's a that's a good median rent. You know, in general, is a rule of thumb like how much difference that might be on a midterm rental versus a long-term. You know, the the industry lore is 50% more. So, your 1,800 is 2,700 bucks. Um, you know, I'd say there, you know, there's a lot of variability around that. You know, I advise people to underwrite to something more like 30 to 50% more. um plenty of people are getting 100% more. Um they're able to mark up 2x, you know, and there are there are some strategies where people really focus more on relocating families and dislocated families because, you know, they either might have an insurance benefit that's helping to pay for it or they're just more willing to pay because their whole family is going to be there. Whereas, if you're a traveling nurse, you're on a stipend like you've got your $1,400, your $1,600 and anything you spend above that comes out of your pocket and anything you spend under it goes into your pocket. And so it's not like a spring break budget for a short-term rental. We're like, "Oh, I'm gonna splurge. It's the best week of my family's year." Like, you're managing this closely in our tenant base. And so the pricing matters depending on that persona. But I think 30 to 50% is the right frame of reference. And you're comparing it against, you know, let's say it's $5 a square foot for your 1500 foot home. All right. $7,500 of furniture. I'm going to make an extra $900 a month. Okay, I'm going to pay that back in 9 months. and then I'm just making 50% more in perpetuity, less having to, you know, repair something or upgrade it. That's a pretty fantastic cash return profile and the type of thing that gives you a lot more stability and opportunity to then go manage an additional one because you do get more density than you might in short term. Yeah, definitely compelling. So, on the revenue side, potential having a bump there. And I like how you said that's kind of a rule of thumb. I I try to give people rules of thumb, too, but I'm also interested. It seems like you running comps would be like on Furnished Finder might be a pretty good idea of saying, "All right, look at my before I buy a property or lease a property. Let me look at all the competition on Furnished Finder. Let me look at the competition on on Airbnb a little bit. Let me even look at, you know, extended stay or something just to see what the rates are and try to at least kind of hone in on what that might be. We just published a uh worksheet on our website. It's available in our blogs that's a uh pricing. It's basically a pricing worksheet. You know, it's literally old school. print it out and do your homework or download the uh Google sheet and it'll do the math for you. But it's going to, you know, go shop the extended say hotels, go shop Furnished Finder, go shop uh Airbnb extra credit, go see what's available on Zillow or, you know, Apartments.com: Apartments and Homes for Rent , Homes.com: Homes for Sale, Homes for Rent, Real Estate and the long-term space. And that'll help you calibrate. Think about that as your triangle. Where do I want to be in the middle of that and how much flexibility do I have? You know, candidly, like the industry is nent enough that there's not nearly the same amount of you can't just go to Price Labs or RDNA and like spit it out. We have to build that or partner with those companies to do it better. We do have a solution called Furnished Finder backstats where you can put in any city in America and look up what are the inventory types, what are the tenant trends, and what's the pricing per unit. That is going to get dramatically better by the end of the year. I'm honestly not proud of the experience we power, but there's an experience there that can be obstructive. Uh it's just not to the quality I'd like to be for people to make this type of decision. Yeah, I love to see that tool. That's that sounds cool. So, I'll be honest, the thing that makes me the most nervous as a long-term landlord transitioning to mid-term rentals is the idea of vacancy. And I I love I love long-term rentals because it's like if my best tenant would stay for 5 years, 10 years, and I'm just it's on autopilot a little bit. I I am I'm intrigued by the higher rent, but I think the uncertainty of like how how how much is that going to be vacant every year because, you know, if I do my math, I'm like extra 900 bucks that's going to pay me back in nine months, but then I'm like, well, what if it's vacant 50% of the time? How how do I kind of get my head around vacancy? Maybe do you have some stats on on some of your best customers? Like what what or best owners? What what are they what are they looking at? How can we get our head around that vacancy number? Yeah. Um, so we're not a booking platform, so I don't have stats the same way Airbnb or, you know, when I was at Vrbo, I knew all the bookings, so I had really great insight into all the stats. Since we're a classified model, we have a lot of indicators and then we do a lot of survey work of our landlords to understand, you know, what's working and where people are. And so here's what I could share. You know, the the top performing, you know, the people who are really professional in this the way that, you know, your audience either is or is aspiring to be, you know, their occupancy is 95%. And that's because the way you structure this, remember, you've got a lease, the lease is getting you paid, and then you've got lease break terms or notice periods to where you're getting 30 days notice typically, depending on however you structure your lease, before the place comes up for vacancy. And you're not playing Tetris like you are with an STR calendar. Um, in that you're taking one booking at a time because almost half of all of the bookings extend. And so you might have a three-month, you know, midterm stay that becomes a 14-month midterm stay. And then it's just super lucrative. But so say you've got this 30-day notice period that gives you your lease up period. We see most of these lease up in three weeks or less. And so you can start to basically be managing these on days of turnover between instead of weeks. You know, obviously your mile may vary. Um your mileage may vary and some people don't have that same success rate, but I think it usually has more to do with the property they picked or an expectation that I've got an STR that's not working well. I make it at MTR and it'll work well because the tenant types and pricing is so different. It may not work well and I think that's the big risk. If you're starting from scratch, I think it's a lot easier. If you're starting from long term, I think it's easy. If you're starting from short term, I think you've got more questions to ask around what are the appropriate expectations for this. Yeah, that's helpful. I'm going to circle around in a minute to some best practices using Furnished Finder to lease it more often and get it. So, I want to circle back to that, but I think since you mentioned leases, I want to go to some of the risk and regulations of midterm rentals and maybe some of the differences between short-term rentals. So, short-term rentals and we we all a lot of us have heard about, you know, local bans on short-term rentals and that kind of regulation. The thing I think I want to talk about more is something that probably long-term uh rental people are more used to and and always concerned about is screening tenants and also just knowing who we're renting to and any fraud issues and any kind of, you know, is this person really, you know, going to move in and squatting my house and things like that. So, can you speak to maybe just that that general topic of how do we as landlords make sure we're getting the best tenant in there and they're not going to be there for 10 months and we're having to evict them at the end of that, you know? So, do you have any thoughts on on that best practice? Um, you know, I think the best practices are largely similar to what you'd have on the long-term side. And so, Furnished Finder provides tools. We provide a tenant screening tool that's powered by T Trans TransUnion, credit check, criminal background. You can opt into further upgrades. And so, we recommend everyone does a tenant screening. The second thing is this isn't the black box of Airbnb and Vrbo where you just accept whoever shows up. Like, you're going to talk to them, use your own judgment, you know, interview them, ask questions, meet them in person. um and be sure they're a good fit because they're typically traveling professionals. You know, I think it is actually often easier to do your diligence around how long are they going to be there, what's the occasion, you know, do you see on their LinkedIn profile, will they share their medical contract, will they share their proof of employment at the university? Like there's questions you can ask that help you verify who they are in a way that I think short-term is actually maybe riskier. And I hear more horror stories from that. Uh the long-term dynamic is similar in that you do have the same protections. you've got a lease, you know, you've got um you know, protection from how do you insulate yourself against squatters? But like there is technically the same risk you'd have on the long-term side, but there's all the same tools you can avail yourself of to protect yourself against it in terms of how you manage how you collect payment. You know, we're not collecting the payment. So, you know, you can collect the rent 30 days in advance, 15 days in advance, and be sure you're covered so that you've got protection in case something goes wrong. Yeah, I think that's maybe good to double click on it. you've mentioned a couple times, but I'm just going to make it clear to everybody is that so Furnished Finder, we we as the owner of the property or the person who's leasing it to somebody else. We pay you and you bring us leads and then we take it from there. Like we we are actually screening the tenant. We are absolutely uh we're receiving so they're not paying through you like they do with Airbnb. So like all of that stuff happens. We have to if we want to sign a lease and have our own lease like that that's a very different dynamic than what what people are used to rentals. it in in many ways it has as much in common with Facebook Marketplace but more professional with more tooling as it does with Airbnb. You know, we expect you to have high quality listings. We expect you to be responsive and use our messaging platform. But we also put your phone number up on the website. You know, every email comes to you. If you want to use your own CRM system, use our own CRM system. If you use Stripe, great. If you don't use Stripe or use Baseline, great. That's that's just not our business. You know, our value proposition is to give the landlord more control, to give them a higher value product and to take care of their product, you know, take care of their property with professional tenants. You know, that's what we're in the business of is really giving people more control. And we think it's really differentiated right now because there's been more capture on the platform side and because there's this big green space in the midterm rental macro trends. You pay basically you pay us $179 a year and we want to see that you're getting bookings and you're keeping your calendar up to date, but we're not trying to manage your business. Yeah. So, there's going to be some professionalism, which is what we talk a lot about on this channel. It's like how do we build systems? How do we build processes? What tech do you use? So, I'd love to dive into that a little bit about just best practices for midterm rentals from the uh tech and ops standpoint. And so do you have any indication of, you know, when people do start collecting rent and they they start doing turnover, are there some some tech that people tend to use more often than others? I know we don't want to like pick favorites here, but I just I think people be curious about like what what's a midterm rental operator look like behind the scenes? Yeah. And and you know, your your small and mighty crowd. You know, I'd start by we have 240,000 landlords on the platform and 300,000 properties. So the average landlord has 1.3 properties and general they all have one. you know, it's like 80% of the landlords on Furnished Finder have a single property and so they're doing it themselves. Um, much like short-term rental in 2010, like most of them probably aren't using software yet. You know, most of them are self-managing this, have their own processes and are figuring it out. You know, we need to have and we power uh we power a tenant screening tool. We power a e- signature state specific lease tool so you can customize your leases. We offer uh a soontobe improved payments platform and we offer a waiver product and so we power different things that help you self-manage and most of our customers self-manage within the furnishinder ecosystem. We have a gap that we need to solve which is how we get furnishinder to integrate with the short-term and long-term software companies. You know the hostfully the guesty the hosta away like we should be able we will be able to ingest that inventory power your calendar. Right now we do an iical sync but nothing more. will make it easier for somebody who's using a short-term rental ecosystem to plug in. Now, we won't be a merchant, so you'll still have to, you know, do that last mile yourself. But similarly, for those of you who haven't done long-term, like there's a whole set of software companies over there that are like hostway, hostly, and guesty. You know, it's your avail. It's your turbo tenant. You know, baseline has a toolkit that's similar to that. It's your rent ready. we will go to connect to them and make it easier to plug those into Furnished Finder so that there's less work and you can just leverage the systems you already have. I expect we'll finish that next year. Right now, we basically just power an iical sync and provide tips on how you know our team can build your listings for you based on what you already have. But then you've got to self-manage in general because it's four turnovers a year and lighter touch. self-managing is a much more straightforward process than if you're going to go have a portfolio of short terms. Yeah. Basically, so if we're a long-term rental tenant, we already have a turbo tenant, we already have a software, we can then we can just put our new short or midterm tenant into that system. Yes. You type their name. What you're saying is there might be some tighter integrations in terms of automation. So you you they applied through through uh Furnished Finder and then we could automatically press a button and they're they're inside of Turbo Tenant instead of us having to like manually type it in. And so right now there's a little bit more management process, but but th those two can play together. And so that's really good to hear because I think a lot of people are going to be either long-term rental folks or short-term rental folks already. And so you you can still play with your you don't have to go get a new midterm rental software. You can you plug this in. We will we will solve this. You know, our commitment is we're here for independent landlords. And so we are way more likely to solve it for the small and mighty that are using a rent ready or a turbo tenant or a guesty than we are to go do an integration with Greyar and bring on 20,000 units of inventory that like change the dynamic of our marketplace. We're here to solve for independent. What's unique about the way the software industry's evolved is that they've actually gotten really good at solving independent and so we need to be there to meet them on how they solve. Yep. Good. All right. Some other questions I had. So ju just the the process, you know, from from the time you have a lead to the time somebody moves in and I'm I'm, you know, I like to have checklists and, you know, processes and do you have any recommendations on that lead generation process? I imagine a lot of people that probably breaks down and that's probably bad for furnish Furnished Finder. It's bad for us if we're not doing a good job of like handling leads and managing leads. And then also on the other end when when we approve people getting people moved in and then also people getting people turned over. Do you have any just advice on best practices there? um it'll feel, you know, it'll feel like motherhood and apple pie STR best practices. Um and what what I'd offer is your um the competitive space and long-term I think is actually quite a bit behind in terms of rental. And so the um you know what I suggest the big the biggest pain point tenants tell us about 80% tell us they landlords were more responsive. You know they didn't hear I think a third don't hear back from a property you know ever. Um, and many don't hear back within the hour, which is kind of best-in-class, you know, from where Airbnb evolved to. And so, the main thing is be responsive. You know, remember, we just sent you someone who's interested in staying in your house. The faster you get back to them and the higher quality your response, the more likely you are to close them. And so, that's definitely number one with a landslide, you know, we provide app notifications and SMS notifications and email, and then you can just work your own workflow. The second thing is keep your calendar up to date. And this is one that's been, you know, a challenge since we're not a booking platform is that anytime someone applies and sees the calendar open, the long-term side, it's pretty common dynamic that they got the booking and they just left it open because you're taking a 12-month booking and it just, you know, a lot of the products lapse after 60 days. We have to feel more like short-term here to where people can trust the calendars and really use them. And so we encourage accurate pricing, accurate calendars, but if you're from the short-term side, like that's nothing new. And then the third thing, and probably always like photos, description, amenities, they matter. Like take the time to fill it out. Well, the difference between being pet friendly and not pet friendly is probably a 40% increase in booking requests. And so there's a very different dynamic there. The last thing I'd add is about like the nuances of being a classified platform. So we have three types of demand signal we provide. One is called a booking request. Uh it feels like a quote and hold model from yester year in Airbnb or Vrbo. And that tells you their occupation, their dates of stay, reason they're coming, all sorts of stuff. The next thing is what we call a message where they may just be asking a question. Hey, I'm interested in your property, but wanted to be sure it's pet friendly for my 90 pound, you know, doodle hybrid as opposed to pet friendly for something that's maybe small breed only. And so that's item two. Item three, we actually power a phone reveal. And that's what often catches people off guard is that the phone just rings and it's like, "Hey, I want to rent your place." And they're like, "Well, where'd you find me? What's going on?" Well, it was on Furnish Minder. And so you give us an email address, we power the phone reveal, and we need to tighten the loop so that people get responses faster there. But depending on which one of those outreaches you have, the faster you get back, the more likely you are to secure it. And our ask is that if you've got multiple properties, advertise them all because if you're using one and keeping the calendar open, it's really a bait and switch dynamic with the tenants and starts to turn them off. Yeah. I was actually looking in Clemson, South Carolina where I am and it it kind of got me excited because I looked at a lot of the the listings and there was the calendars on there but the calendars were full until you know six months from now and there's a limited inventory. So I was kind of thinking about from a tennis standpoint I was like this is really interesting like if you can if you can really dial in your listing if you can really do a good job of being the basics responsiveness that you're going to out compete a lot of landlords you know especially early on in this process and midterm rental process. All right. So, I think my the final thing I want to kind of circle around of operations is just is there anything unique to Furnished Finder? You've mentioned some of the listing stuff, but any other best practices like for those of who are like, "All right, I'm going to I'm going to try one property. I'm just going to put it on there. I'm going to do it." Like, what what would be some of the the the getting started steps? Anything else that we've missed that you would recommend for people who are just kind of get dipping their toes into the furnisher world? Well, I I'd start with like what are the resources to go learn? Um, and so, uh, we, you know, we have a podcast called Landlord Diaries. Our two in-house landlords, they each manage about 10 properties, interview a different independent landlord every other week, and just talk about exactly this type of thing. How did you get started? How did you think about furnishing? You know, how did you think about your target persona, what was the way you outfitted for it? And so, there's a wealth of knowledge. We've got three years of podcast where you can really learn from other people's experiences. And so, I would definitely check out Landlord Diaries. Um, the second thing I'd offer, uh, is that because we're a classified site, you can, interestingly, like in your example in Clemson, South Carolina, you saw a listing that's near one of your houses and booked for the next seven months, send them a message, you know, hey, hey, it's Chad. I'm a local landlord. Also, I'm really interested in learning about your experience on Furnished Finder. Like, maybe it won't always work out for me in Furnished Finder, but you're almost always going to get the truth from them. And in many cases, like it is a community that still feels more like 2010 STR where people are so excited for the category and to see it do well, they're just trying to get more people in because the inventory is the constraint. It doesn't feel like 3A now. Oh my gosh, if somebody else adds a fourbedroom beachfront here, like I'm I'm out. Like there's just it's so saturated. And so I'd encourage people to just connect. You know, there are a lot of great meetups. There's a lot of realtors doing interesting things that are helping with that property management space. And then, you know, the third thing is remember that the investment here doesn't have to feel like taking out a 30-year mortgage and buying a house. Like, try a room, try an ADU, try an arbitrage, or, and this is, I think, an excellent cheat code that our Landlord Diaries host recommend. You know, let's say you've got a vacant long-term rental and you're thinking about it. Put it on Furnished Finder without furniture and say, "I will furnish this for the first tenant." And so you will have input on what the bed configuration is. Maybe you need two singles in one room and a king in the other. Or maybe you want two kings because you're actually going to be, you know, uh, you know, traveling together but not a family. And that gives people a lot of flexibility. I'm like, "Well, hey, that's awesome. Like, let's go pick this stuff out together. I'm going to be there for six months. And it helps you get off the ground and derisk it. And it's a really common strategy that I think can be very appealing of how you'll stage it and then partner with somebody to get started. I love that tip because I'm thinking about my my unit right now. And that's that's sort of a way to derisk it and you as a as a business owner, you always want to try a free roll the dice like, "All right, can I see if this thing work this business works before I actually invest the 7,000 bucks or 10,000 bucks or whatever I spend?" you know, you know, if you you know, I think if you're um you know, would you spend $179 to get more out of your long-term rental? Like if you're in the real estate game, you have to be willing to make that bet every time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like if you're if you're running that close to the razor's edge on your operating margin, like this is not a good long-term place for you because you just got to have more available capital to try things. And I think we're an interesting thing to try with that strategy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you should also as a landlord think about the fact that you have a a mortgage payment of maybe a,000 bucks or 1,500 bucks that if you don't fill it up in the next month or two, that's 3,000 bucks that you're out of your pocket. So you can't you can't be cheap on the I've never regretted spending money even when it didn't work on marketing and on education. Like those are two two things as as an entrepreneur always spend money on, you know, and the small and mighty like you don't have to furnish it all new from Pottery Barn. Like as I mentioned $5 a square foot, you can be doing this. Um, you know, a lot a lot of the furniture could potentially be secondhand. You know, obviously the linens and everything need to be used, but you can be creative with how you furnish it. And then you could also look at renting furniture. You know, if you're really, really nervous, then, you know, do the math, talk to your local court or a local agency, place somebody for 3 months, rent the furniture, and just see what the experience is and give yourself time to go buy if you need to. Yeah, great tips. All right, so I'm going to put links to your podcast. That sounds really interesting, and people will check that out. I'm obviously going to have links to Furnished Finder and how people can get there. Is there any anywhere else that people can stay in touch with you? This has been super practical and I've really enjoyed getting your tips and I know people probably want to follow you. Um I'll I'll give you the link for the stats page also. You can look at city specific stats. Um easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn and you know I think a uh unsung heroes at Furnished Finder and something we're really proud of. You know, we have 200 people that answer the phone all day every day. And so there are real humans here who many of them have been in the space for over five years talking to landlords, talking to tenants, and you know, reach out to us and schedule a sales consultation, schedule, you know, ask a question and chat to our customer service team and like just let us help. Awesome. Well, Jeeoff, thank you for your time. I'm really excited for our audience and for hopefully some of my units as well to uh to check out check out the space and I know this has been it's been a dynamic market. there's a with short-term rentals changing and people kind of spilling over into other things, long-term tenants having vacancies here and there, or just thinking about how do I increase cash flow in a market where interest rates are higher. This is definitely an interesting strategy. So, I really appreciate it. The the housing crisis is real and almost 5 million units short and not getting solved in the next decade. The affordability crisis real and interest rates are not going back to 2% anytime soon. And so, like this is the type of pivot that entrepreneurs make and I'm really excited to be part of it. Yeah, enjoyed the conversation, Jeff. Take care. Thank you. This episode, we went really deep on one specific strategy, midterm rentals, but we didn't talk much about the big picture of how do you actually achieve financial freedom with real estate, which is called 22 years of real estate investing advice in 46 minutes. And it's my best advice on how to do things like creating the cash flow you need to actually have financial freedom, how to do deal analysis to understand when you have a good deal, and much more. So, check that out. If you're watching on YouTube, you can click on the thumbnail above me here, or you can click on the link in the podcast or the YouTube description below. Thank you so much for watching.