The short-term rental industry has matured. The easy wins are harder to find, regulations are tighter, and in many markets the rush of new supply has made returns more competitive. But according to Furnished Finder CEO Jeff Hurst, monthly (midterm) rentals are in a very different place. In his words, “the gold rush is behind us” in short-term rentals, while “the gold rush is ahead of us” in midterm rentals. That view lines up with Furnished Finder’s (opens in new tab) current positioning around 30+ day stays, more than 300,000 listings nationwide, and monthly rentals as one of housing’s fastest-growing segments.
What makes that idea compelling is not just optimism. It is the combination of rising demand, relatively limited supply growth, and a renter base that now stretches well beyond travel nurses. Furnished Finder’s Market Insights (opens in new tab) points to longer average stays, a growing mix of corporate travelers and relocating families, and a model built around fewer turnovers and more durable occupancy.
Midterm rentals are still early in the cycle
One of the strongest takeaways from this episode is that midterm rentals are not where short-term rentals are today. They are where short-term rentals used to be years ago, before the category became crowded, expensive, and highly optimized.
That is an important distinction for real estate investors and landlords. In mature short-term rental markets, winning often requires more capital, more amenities, more operational intensity, and more tolerance for regulation risk. In monthly rentals, the opportunity can still look much simpler: a well-located, well-furnished property that solves a practical housing need for 30 days or more.
Furnished Finder and AirDNA’s 2026 market report (opens in new tab) describes monthly rentals as a fast-growing segment driven by broader structural shifts in housing and mobility, not just a temporary spike in one niche audience. Furnished Finder’s own data pages also point to strong demand from relocating families, corporate travelers, and other renter groups looking for flexible housing rather than vacation stays.
The best midterm rental markets are often the least obvious ones
A lot of investors still assume the strongest rental opportunities must be in vacation destinations. That logic works better for short-term rentals than for midterm rentals.
This conversation makes a different case: the most promising monthly rental markets are often places with multiple practical demand drivers, not just tourism. Markets with healthcare systems, universities, corporate offices, relocating families, and ongoing development projects can support midterm rentals for very different reasons than beach towns or national park gateways.
That is one reason suburban and secondary markets can be so compelling. If a market has hospitals, graduate programs, new construction, distribution hubs, data centers, or major employers, it may have far more monthly rental demand than many landlords realize. Furnished Finder’s redesigned Market Insights (opens in new tab) pages are built around exactly this kind of analysis, helping landlords evaluate what tenant demand and pricing look like in a given city before they commit to a strategy.
What actually works as a midterm rental property
Another useful point from this episode is that not every property should be repositioned as a midterm rental. Some short-term rental owners assume they can simply raise the minimum stay and appeal to the same audience. In many cases, that is the wrong move.
Furnished Finder’s current inventory and public materials make clear that the sweet spot is still smaller, more practical housing. The platform says monthly rentals are built around reliable 30+ day stays, and its pages emphasize that many travelers are looking for comfort, value, and everyday livability rather than vacation-style amenities. The site also notes that a meaningful share of inventory is made up of smaller units and room rentals.
That is why studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom properties are often especially attractive in the monthly rental model. Parking matters. Pets matter. Washer and dryer matter. Fast Wi-Fi matters. But unlike short-term rentals, the strategy is usually not about adding hot tubs, murals, game rooms, or “wow factor” features. It is about functionality and fit for the renter’s use case.
Why the long-term outlook still looks strong
The most persuasive part of Jeff Hurst’s argument is that the growth of monthly rentals appears tied to broader structural forces, not just one moment in the market. Furnished Finder’s recent reporting and blog content point to sustained demand being driven by housing shortages, affordability pressure, work mobility, and a growing need for flexible furnished housing.
That matters because it suggests the category may have more staying power than many investors assume. Monthly rentals are not just serving travel nurses. Furnished Finder says corporate travelers are now its largest tenant group, while relocating families are one of the fastest-growing segments.
For landlords, that combination is powerful: longer stays, broader demand, fewer turnovers, and a product that can work in far more places than a classic short-term rental. That is why the opportunity feels different right now. Not because short-term rentals are over, but because monthly rentals may still be early enough that many investors have not fully grasped the upside.
Transcript
The gold rush is behind us in short-term rentals and in midterm rentals, I think the gold rush is ahead of us. It feels like all of the macro tailwinds are ahead of us and I actually think the value prop is pretty durable for midterm rentals. We are the real estate Robinsons. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today, brother. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you and share with our audience a little bit more about the midterm rental market. Thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me, Tony. Yeah. So, I think where I want to start, um, the short-term rental industry has gone through its first cycle, I'd say. And when you think about, you know, I'm I'm in my mid-30s, so I've been I'm old enough to have, you know, somewhat experienced the dot boom and bust. Uh, definitely the the the 2008 crisis. And obviously not to that extent, but the characteristics of the short-term rental industry are similar to both Paris - Fashion Rubber Footwear and real estate where there are a lot of early movers, people who were getting in when the go was hot, which then drew in a lot of other people uh who who kind of inflated that industry and then the bubble popped. And now that the bubble has popped, we're getting to this point of I think maturation in the short-term rental industry. My first question to you, Jeff, is where do you think we are in the midterm rental cycle? And do you think the same kind of popping of the bubble that happened in short term is bound to happen again in the midterm rental industry? No, I think we are uh we are much earlier. I mean at some level everything eventually has a bubble or a plateau. You know, I don't think the short term it's interesting. I think as a category and industrywide, it's not as though the short-term bubble burst. But for 5 to 10% of everyone who's in the short-term category, it burst. And I think that's where there's this different dynamic is that like I think I think it's going to be slow and steady growth and probably low singledigit growth for a long time. But the gold rush is behind us in short-term rentals. And in midterm rentals, I think the gold rush is ahead of us. And so I always say, you know, I got into the short-term rental game uh joining home away in 2010. Uh and this feels like 2010. You know, it feels like all of the macro tailwinds are ahead of us. And I actually think the um the value prop is pretty durable for midterm rentals. You know, if you think about the original short-term rental value prop, it was basically cheaper than a hotel room with more space. Over time, that evolved and it became like higherend. It became more luxury. It became a different type of proposition. But when you think about midterm, the value prop is really still I'm looking at an extended stay America and I'm looking at this studio apartment and boy is this studio apartment a way better value than extended stay America. Boy, is this a way better value than an Airbnb. And I think that's going to be durable for, you know, more like a decade than a year. And so I'm very optimistic for investors that are getting in. I appreciate that insight and I actually just had the opportunity to chat with Jamie Lane who's the VP of data at AIDNA. And he shared with me that in 2019 nationally the short-term rental uh occupancy like nationally was at 54%. Postcoid I think you cited 2021 or 2022 it had jumped up to 61%. And then last year in 2024 it was down to 54%. Y so we went from 53 up to 61 now back down to 54 and 2025 is pacing pretty well slightly up from 2024 in most markets. So to your point I also don't think that the short-term rental industry has ended. Obviously we invest there. We're continuing to invest in that market. But I do think we're reaching this phase where a lot of the people who maybe weren't suited to be in this asset class to begin with have maybe now exited or handed at least handed operation off to someone who's more qualified to do so. And now we're we're seeing that that stabilize. But I I know the trend for the short-term rental industry where it started down here, peaked way up, and now we're we're settling at this point where we'll start to see some steady growth. What have those figures look like in the midterm rental industry? Like are we seeing, you know, massive massive spikes in occupancy in ADRs or has it been more of a steady steady increase? Yeah, the um you know, it's it's important to kind of remember the Furnished Finder place in the ecosystem. And so we're a classified site. And so for those of you who've been in the short term game a long time, it feels like the VRBO business model you grew up with. You know, you give us $179 a year. We send you leads. We offer you tools to help manage your listing and your leads, but we don't always know true occupancy. You know, we're not a booking platform the way Verbbo and Airbnb are. And so I don't have great occupancy data. What I do have great data on is just how many people are opting into the Furnished Finder experience and how many tenants are shopping. And that that second point I think is the more important one. So, you know, shoppers on our site this year versus last year are up, you know, depending on where you are, probably somewhere between close to 40%. Um, and so there's a ton more demand. Inventory on our sites up more like single digits, but recently it started accelerating. And so I think last month we had an almost 3,000 listings. And so what you're seeing is every listing on the platform has more demand than it used to. Demand is still growing very fast. And because of that, I think we're going to start to see inventory start to catch up. But what's been most fascinating for me this year, the place where most of the new inventory is coming from is actually people who already have inventory. It's like they're seeing it works and they're adding more inventory. And that's what feels most like short-term rental five or 10 years ago where the people who got in and were good at were like, "Oh crap, I gotta do this again. I gotta do this again. I gotta do this again." And now those people like yourself are like, "I've done this a lot, but I'm not sure this next one's as easy as those first five, 10, or 20." And I think in the MTR game, you're still at that spot where you're in those first five, 10, or 20. It feels easy, and it feels like there's a lot of money to be made. The tailwinds driving that tenant demand are that we went from being a nursing platform to a platform that really serves corporate relocating families still nursing and then also academics and all of those are growing closer to like 70 80%. Um, and that's really fueling the growth. Healthcare is flat to slightly up, but it's it's honestly it's more like short-term rentals. It's not a category you can depend on to go build the business and have, you know, significant double digit growth. Jeff, you you mentioned a lot of really important points. Um, first you you talked about growth in demand, right? Like the number of people coming onto the platform being I think you said 40%. Uh, and growth in supply being still in the single digits. Like that is that is a massive tailwind for folks who are on that platform because to your point it means there's currently significantly more demand than there is supply on that platform. And I know we're talking at like a national level, right? Yeah, this will vary from market to market, but still it leads one to believe that there's still a lot of upside as you mentioned earlier uh in the mentor rental strategy. Now, the other point that you made that was really interesting was that you know the mentor rental space I think initially got its hype especially during co because of the uh healthcare industry and like traveling nurses I feel like that's all I heard traveling nurses traveling nurses you know but now you said it it's expanded. Are there cities that you're seeing where maybe the the demand is stronger than others? Like is it the the urban kind of centers, you know, like the large metro uh cities? Is it the suburban uh markets that are doing better? Is maybe like the smaller rural cities that don't have as much housing inventory to to house? Like where are you seeing maybe the biggest spikes in demand on the platform? You know, there's a um um when you think about our use cases, corporate, health care, academic, and really families, but in particular families who uh are relocating, you know, often for corporate, the places with the strongest demand exhibit those characteristics in spades. Seattle's a great example. Seattle's typically one of our top national markets in terms of the amount of demand we have for it. And Seattle's not one of the biggest cities in the US. Like, you know, it's in the top I think it's in the top 10, but it's not in the top three. But they've got huge corporations, you know, Amazon and Microsoft and and and they've got a ton of universities, including UW. And they've got a ton of healthcare. And so they've got all these, it's possible to basically be in Seattle and be serving three or four of our top five use cases in a way that's not as possible in a lot of other cities. When I when I think about it of like what's my strategy though, we're in a fortunate position where it's not like, oh, here's the thing that's working. Almost everything's kind of working, but they're working for different reasons. And so major urban's working often because the housing stock's a little bit overpriced or out of reach. And so um there's typically more families coming in. Uh and there's often more corporate coming through that are um you know inclined to save some money in this environment versus where they may have been in the past. When you look more suburban and rural, it's because there's not enough good housing supply available. There aren't the same breadth of hotels. And frequently, and I think really critically for an audience that's maybe more used to short-term rental, a lot of these places don't have great short-term rental options because they're not leisure destinations. You know, it's not a place where you're trying to go vacation. You know, it's the suburbs or it's kind of more of a drive-thru town. And those places need this inventory for a different set of uses. And they need a different type of inventory than what succeeds on Airbnb. We're we're 70% two-bedroom and lower. A fifth of the inventory on our site's actually a room rental. You know, it's more of a budget accommodation. you know, it's for someone closer to the median salary in America than it is somebody at that like verbbo Airbnb probably like kind of mass affluent or even affluent salary in America. And so you get to open up different more accessible strategies. But I think it can work I'd say almost everywhere. And the place I'm actually least bullish on is the leisure destinations. You know, it is actually like your 3A or your Gatlinburg. There's a role for it, but I think those towns are still going to be primarily short-term rental because there's a bigger market attracted there. you hit on a very important point that was actually my next question of like what markets should we maybe avoid and you talk about like the the maybe more pure vacation play markets is places that midterm renting doesn't work and you know we we have properties mostly around national parks in the United States and we had a property where our permit was just taking forever to get approved like the county was backed up it was you know usually takes like a month we were on like month four um of still waiting on this permit and we said okay well what if we just try and midterm rent this thing out while we wait for the permit to come through. And the market was just not meant for people coming to stay four months there. You know, it's like no one wants to spend four months usually at a national park, you know, like they're in there for a few days and they go home. So, we we got very little interest. The interest that we did get was like not even close to what we needed to to make it worth our while. So, I I I love that point. But going back to what you're seeing in the markets that are working well for midterm, you talked about diversity of of like uh industry, healthcare, uh business, right? Business headquarters uh and universities. Are those kind of the key things that someone should be looking for as they're vetting markets? Or are there any other indicators? Were there KPIs, you know, just any other data points that we should be considering to validate whether or not a city actually makes sense for the midterm rental? Yeah, I I think the um you know places I encourage people to start you know I encourage people to start on the stats page on Furnished Finder which is you know depending on when this airs on YouTube uh you know is within a couple months of getting a pretty major refresh and will be a lot more wholesome in like the amount of inventory we give. Uh the second data point I give is like I do think that is uh short-term rentals can be instructive um but they're not an answer because the difference in use case is uh so significant but like an airdna or seeing in particular for pricing you know you should be able to probably get a little less price than what somebody has on Airbnb. But then the third thing and I think a really overlooked tool is know what hotels are nearby. If there's an extended stay America nearby like they don't make that many mistakes. They don't go build a hotel on a whim and hope it works out and they don't flip from one strategy to the other. It's like, you know, get to know that extended stay space, those Spring Hill suites and those embassy suites and those extended stayameas. And if you're near one of those, you've got a better indication that you're probably near a population who's actually looking for a product like yours. And you can start to think about, okay, well, if someone's going to spend $2,100 a month at a 580 foot efficiency extended stay America, can I provide a better experience than them with a studio apartment and make money at $1,900 a month? And for most studios and a lot of the places we're talking about, like $1,900 is a great return on capital. It's a great cash flowing maneuver versus your long-term, but it may not be what you would have expected on a short term, but it's more consistent and it's a heck of a lot less work. And so I encourage people to look at those three data points and then you know the intersection of the three to me is like invest in something you know you know it's a fortunate category in that a lot of what you do can be within 10 minutes of your house. You know, if you live in a place where you know people who are academics or traveling corporate or healthcare or most commonly like families who are moving but not sure they want to buy yet, really start with can I serve a use case I'm actually familiar with and then the benefit becomes I can actually manage this property within a 5 or 10 minute commute to my house instead of remote managing in Gatlinburg or 30A or you know go pick your skier or beach town and there just gets to be a whole lot more economies of scale for you because you're saving the money on the management you We we invest mostly in short-term rentals and we haven't really done it in our area because the short-term rental demand we're like in the suburbs of Los Angeles, right? So, like you said, I mean, we've got mostly state schools, you know, these aren't like super large D1 universities. Um, we have some there's not a lot of demand here for short-term, per se. Um, but I've been thinking like, well, man, what if we did do midterm, right? I mean, there there are definitely people who come here for work, for travel, for all these different things that that maybe we can be there. So, I I appreciate you sharing that because it's getting the gears turning for me. You know, I always think about like if you know, in your use case, if somebody close by, you know, if your neighborhood's getting a In-N-Out Burger or if somebody's building a new hotel or if somebody's building a shopping center, skilled trade is going to come through and need a place to stay, right? And, you know, a lot of these towns don't actually have the skilled trade to do the construction, to have the GC, to train the chefs. And that type of growth in a suburban community creates the opportunity where like they're not going to buy permanent houses there. They actually need a place to live and will be more comfortable in your setup than in one of these extended state hotels. And I think that's like just connect the intuition for what that might look like. And state schools are another good example like a state school with a graduate program. Like graduate students get married and they're broke and they need to save money on furniture and like you can help them through a time in life and actually make money and provide a great community service. That aspect, especially when you're investing near where you live, I think is quite compelling versus short-term rentals because I think midterm rentals are a real community asset. You're helping a family stay nearby when they've got an insurance claim. You're helping, you know, the community invest itself by bringing in skilled trade or bringing in a traveling professor. And so there's not this same stigma around like, I can't believe Tony put a short-term rental on the block. like, you know, there's this animous in a way that there's not with the midterm rental because, you know, I it's so I'm so fortunate that I could rent this for my grandparents to be nearby when their first grandchild was built. I'm so fortunate that somebody's here who otherwise couldn't be. And it's it's a really smart point because you're you're able to fill a need without all of the animosity that that short-term rentals kind of generate. It's really got my gears turning on. Should we explore maybe midterm where we live? Because like I mean like even the subdivision where we bought our primary residence, it did not exist before 2017. Like we bought our house new construction, a brand new subdivision. And my town, it's it's already a large town. You know, several hundred thousand people that live in this in this suburban city. But the population is going to double over the next I think they said 10 or 15 years because of all the new construction that's going on. Someone has to build that town who doesn't live there. the place to stay, right? And like I mean we we are one of the largest um like industrial hubs in California or really in the in the country um where we have multi-million square foot uh distribution centers that are being built all around our area and it literally I see them all over the place and you know you you just got my you got my gear center man on on like what what the opportunity is here. Let's talk a little bit Jeff though about maybe the red flags. You mentioned vacation rental markets, Destin 3A, etc. probably aren't the best place to focus on midterm. Are there any other red flags that a new investor should be looking out for to say midterm rentals won't work here? I think um beyond geography and and my my caveat to the, you know, the 3A type of point is like midterm can be a supplemental strategy to short-term, you know, an offseason strategy or shoulder season strategy. I think that's viable, but it doesn't replace short-term. you know, I own three short-term rentals and then none of them do I have a midterm strategy in place. But if I had one in Michigan, I'd probably have a midterm strategy for the winter season, you know, and so there there's places like that where it can be supplemental. The other red flag I'd have, it's not about geography, it's actually about footprint. Um, you know, a lot of the most successful short-term rentals are four or fivebedroom, high-capacity bunk room, and I'd say they've got a um they've got a pretty expensive fit and finish. um you're it's unlikely to get that to pencil in term of a midterm rental. Both the fit and finish where like we typically recommend for five to seven dollars a square foot you can furnish your midterm rental. You know on a short-term rental that might be more like $30 to $40 a square foot. And so you don't want to be overinvested for the revenue potential. And then the other thing is if you if you do have something that's like a fourbedroom with a big bunk or um something that's really built to accommodate multiple families to get your ADR up, there aren't as many use cases in midterm where there's 13 people trying to come stay. You know, I'd say it's typically like the large size would be a fivep person nuclear family and if they're there temporarily, they may be fine in a three-bedroom, you know, fourbedroom is a stretch. And so I'd really be thinking about those use cases of like you're more likely to be looking at something that feels like should I own two or three mid-term rentals instead of a short-term rental because you can go buy a duplex or a quadplex and play with a format as an investment strategy for the same amount of money you would spend on a short term. The the $5 per square foot is is mind-boggling to me. Uh because like you said, I mean $30 to $40 a square foot is like the going rate to uh fit out a short-term rental because not only are you getting furniture, but you've got the murals, you've got the amenities, the hot tub, the sauna, the pool, the this, the all those things really start to add up. But to your point, if we've got, you know, six construction workers who are going to be here for 3 months, they don't they don't need all of those bells and whistles, right? They just want a nice place to lay their heads in there. It needs to be dark at night. It needs to be quiet. It needs to be comfortable. The TV needs to work. And and then over time, like, you know, if someone asks for, hey, it would be really great if we had a Crock-Pot, buy them a Crockpot, right? Like you might spend $50 and they renew for two months, like outstanding. But you don't have to overinvest in the beginning and be like, I'm going to wow them with this feature. You know, I've got a gelato maker and I can't wait to tell them about it. It's [laughter] like it's probably not going to be the difference maker, right? So, we we talked about the the kind of macro level. I I want to focus a little bit more, Jeff, on the actual property. And you know, we talked a little bit about like finishing in and and the design, the amenities, and what we do need to do versus what we don't need to do. But in your experience or from the data that you've seen being at Furnished Finder, what are maybe like the ideal property types that someone should be searching for from a midterm rental? Is it going after this kind of smaller one-bedrooms that would compete with a traditional hotel stay or is it actually hey let's go after like the five bedrooms that maybe the hotels can't compete with because there's simply not enough space. Yeah, it's it's way more about the studio through two-bedroom. That's that's absolutely the sweet spot, you know, and so, you know, that's 70% of our inventory. It's a similar amount of searches. I think there's interesting growth in three-bedroom. You know, this the the use case I like to talk to people about it is imagine the three-bedroom in your neighborhood that someone might be your neighborhood's a bad example because it's all new construction, but in a you know, 50-year-old neighborhood that someone's treating as a tear down or that they're really having trouble renting long term. You know, with good furnishing and a good location, that can be a successful midterm because someone isn't treating it as a home forever. They're treating it as a place to stay for three months in a time of crisis. You know, plumbing burst or fire or roof caught on fire, whatever it was. and but that three-bedroom may be accommodating a family that's used to a fourbedroom, but they're just thrilled to have three bedrooms and two baths and make it work. And so those dynamics give you more flexibility for how you can flex up. You know, I don't see a lot of success above fourbedroom. And when I do, it's actually a co-living strategy where people are buying a place and renting it out by the room for midterm. And I think that's an interesting strategy also. But the sweet spots this two-bedroom and less and if you think about the filters that are most used on furnish on Furnished Finder pets is through the roof important. It's not that the filter gets clicked that much more than short term. It's that in short term people are sometimes willing to not bring their pets. If you're traveling for 94 days on average the dog's coming, the cat's coming. Like they're more than likely your companion. Like they're an important part of your experience and you're not going to board them for three to four months. And so pets becomes way more important um and I think a little bit less risky because the pet's going to get used to being there for three months as opposed to is just there for three days. Uh the next one is parking. Uh a lot of people are commuting and convenient parking makes a big difference. Um and so you know in the scenario where it's like street parking as available. I think that can be a big deterrent. You're really looking for the ability for someone to have parking. Washer dryer hugely important. And then the things that are table stakes in short term like you know fast internet and Wi-Fi are still table stakes. You can cover a lot of ground in midterm with things that are actually cheap like blackout shades. Um you know and I don't mean like you know custommade blackout drapes. I mean blackout shades. You can do things that you know leaving a noise machine things like that can move the needle a lot because they do help someone enjoy the stay more. Jeff I know some midterm rental folks who really specialize. Um, like for example, I know someone who really just focuses on um, insurance relocations and because that's her niche, she actually does target larger properties, you know, four, five, sometimes six bedrooms because that's where the need of the insurance kind of companies are. How much does strategy play into what kind of property that works best as a midterm rental? Totally. Knowing your persona matters a ton. Um, and so you know what a tra a traveling nurse typically has a sip of somewhere around $1,600 $1,700. It's a different amount of money they're willing to spend than most traveling corporate and quite a bit smaller than what a relocating family might have and in particular relocating family on insurance. And so I think you've got to pick, you know, what I'd call like your archetype of what persona you're hoping to serve, you know, based on your geography, your price point, and where you are. And you can't assume that you're going to end up with a, you know, family of six, they're on insurance claim for six months and then a traveling nurse and then a traveling professor. Like they just have different use cases and different needs. The uh the insurance, I think, is a it's really a fascinating strategy. Um, for the most part, I think if you're going to be in the insurance strategy, furnishinder is part of your strategy, but you're going to be hustling more. You're going to be building relationships with placement agencies and making more calls for insurance. and really probably baking on lower occupancy but way higher average daily rate because you're willing to wait for the insurance claim and basically risk some vacancy to be sure you're going to get a better ADR. And a lot of people do really well with it, but you probably have to be more invested in it as an operator than if you're going to try and just turn key for corporate or healthcare or even um relocating families. Two followup questions to that, Jeff. Um, first, do you see Furnished Finder maybe playing a bigger role in actually facilitating those conversations between the insurance providers and the actual listings on the platform? Because, you know, we we know that some of the folks who are at these relocation places are probably going on to Furnished Finder to find those listings. Do you see it on the road map for Furnished Finder to maybe make that connection easier? Yeah. Um, we need to build tools. We call them our uh power agents to make it easier to use the site as a power agent. There's a lot of them out there. You know, we're having conversations with the largest insurance placement agencies, medical placement agencies, you know, and even even corporate relocation. And what you know what's unique about our site, we do have some tools that are um I'd say you that definitely need an improvement but facilitate like the housing request is a tool really unique to Furnished Finder. a one to many tool where a tenant can submit a request to everyone within 30 miles and say like this is what I need who's got something. You know, it's great. A ton of people will then contact you. It can be hard because you might get 500 replies of you should really rent my place and you [clears throat] really just need one place. And so what we need to build is a smarter set of tools that help and and in particular help uh power agents but even most tenants understand who's responsive, who's got accurate rates, who's got an accurate calendar. The biggest challenge we have at Furnished Finder is, you know, also what felt like 2010 at Home Away and Verbbo. There's not enough host hygiene yet on responding to and um helping the tenant through the booking process. And that's because a lot of these landlords have come from the long-term space, right? Where you're you're really only practicing once a year every 1.7 years. Like you're not a trained marketer and manager the way a short-term operator is. And so when people ask me like, "Well, I'm going from short-term to midterm. what do I need to know? And I'm like, if you're a good short-term operator, you're already a good midterm operator. You've got the playbook, you've got the tools, you're probably going to be in our top. You've just got to be sure you're not you don't have the wrong expectations of you're going to get the same ADR and have 96% occupancy as a midterm. You're going to have to make some trade-offs in order to accommodate it. But operationally, it is much easier than being short-term because you're going to do three to four turns a year. you you bring up a good point of you you called it host hygiene which I I like that term but I I think that and you know I've got a lot of beef with Airbnb for different reasons right obviously their platform has helped me build a big business so I'm appreciative of that but I also have some beef with them but one of the things that I do appreciate is that they facilitate the entire transaction I can post uh my listing and you know roughly within an hour I could have someone booking my property me collecting fees and there's less space. Do you see moving in that direction where you actually help facilitate the entire transaction or is it really just part of like your core principle to say we just want to be the marketplace and let the the the guest and the host figure that out amongst themselves? Yeah. When you think about our space, um you know, I always say like we're in the valley between the giants. On one side, the giants are Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia. On the other side, the giants are Zillow at the Co-Star properties, you know, Homes.com: Homes for Sale, Homes for Rent, Real Estate and Apartments.com: Apartments and Homes for Rent and for rent, those those properties. The long-term guys don't do any of that um, you know, uh, merchantofrecord process the way the short-term guys do. You know, Zillow's not collecting all of the rent up front, taking a cut of every payment and all of those things. I see us in this case being more like the long-term guys, but primarily because um, the amount of work Airbnb and Verbbo do to facilitate that for you. Like if you've got a successful short-term rental, they're doing that 50 to 70 times a year. Like there's actually a lot of complexity they're managing. Now, I still think they're probably overcharging for it. But when you're doing it three to four times a year, they're dramatically overcharging it for you. Like how hard is it to collect, you know, rent once a month, right? Like it's not 15% of rent hard. You don't need to have that much fee built in. And so, you know, Furnished Finder and my in particular and like I was president of Verbbo and I was part of a lot of the fee escalation over that decade is that we simply don't earn enough for our landlords and our customers to justify that we should be charging that much and being part of the transaction. So, our philosophy is going to be that we're going to continue to improve the tools we offer to you. And so, we're going to improve our payments tool. We're going to improve our leasing tool. We've already improved calendar and messaging. And you know, people will probably be, you know, tie goes to the runner type of thing, preferenced if they're using our supplemental tools, but it's not mandatory because we've just got to make, we believe if for, you know, $179 we can help someone make $20,000, they're going to be a great customer of ours. We need to go help them make the money and then we've earned the right for them to add another property or for them to use some more of our tools. But jumping into that, you know, honestly, every OTAA makes at least 10% and it's often more like 15. That is the entire operating margin for a long-term rental. Like [laughter] there's nothing less to there's nothing left to give. And so we think we've just got to be a lower rate. You you talked about host hygiene. I want to circle back to that. What do you see the most successful midterm rental operators doing that the bottom 80% aren't? Honestly, it's um it's going to seem so basic to someone who's running a short-term rental property. Good photos, thoughtful description, you know, a uh a headline that's more descriptive than it is like all adjectives, helping someone know what they're about to click into. And then be super responsive. You know, if you're responding within an hour on Furnished Finder, you're in the top 5% of responsiveness. Whereas in Airbnb, you might be in like the middle 50% because everyone's now either using AI or trained to respond within minutes. And so Jeff, my team, just side note, they have to respond within two minutes to any message that comes in. Like that's the KPI that we've set for our team internally. Yeah. We we recently did, you know, we we recently redid our messaging platform and one of the things we learned was that um a third of tenants don't get a response on a message period. Wow. And so like, you know, and it's like, wow, we've got to fix that. But if you're a quality short-term rental operator, like how well can you compete in that space, like you know, it's just going to be it's an absolute bonanza of you're responding in two minutes and somebody else is responding in two days or two months or not at all. Like you've got a great chance of getting that booking. And so, um, the fundamentals are still the thing that separates the great from the good. And the only exception to that is there's still no way to fundamental yourself out of the wrong property. It's like you still actually need to have a footprint that makes sense and a that makes sense. A big part of success in the short-term rental space, you know, like as you mentioned the fundamentals, but once you actually have the property up and running, a big part of success is the actual pricing of the listing on an ongoing basis. And there are dynamic pricing tools out there like Price Labs, uh, which is our preferred vendor for dynamic pricing. Does price labs also work in the midterm rental space or are there other data points or sources we should be looking at to make informed decisions around pricing? We recently published a webinar and a worksheet on this topic that I encourage people to look at. Um, and so I'll come back to the price labs question, but I I I think the triangulation is at least three-fold. And so like the triangulation points are go shop Furnished Finder, go shop the extended stay hotels nearby, and go shop comparable inventory on Airbnb. And the bonus you can do to that to really dive in deeper is go shop Zillow or coast Apartments.com: Apartments and Homes for Rent long-term unfernished and add 30 to 50%. If you get those calibration points, you're going to have a really good feel what the opportunity is for you to, you know, to to price this well. Uh Price Labs has a tool for midterm. Um because Priceel Labs is built on a short-term profile, they've got way better data for short-term. And so I think they're excellent at what should my midterm, shoulder season, or offseason strategy be. I think they're excellent at what should my high season, monthly discount be. They simply don't yet have enough data. And I really admire what Richie's building over there and we're potentially going to partner with them on how we solve this so that they can have better data for the how do I price a midterm where Tony lives? like there's not great STR data and so you've got to use long-term benchmarks, you've got to use hotel benchmarks, and you've got to be a little bit more creative in how you go solve it. The only other thing I'd add, which I think gets overlooked for a lot of first-time investors, is like price it where you make money. Um, and you've really got to know, you know, you're going to have utilities added. You're going to have some costs added that are common and short-term, but that aren't common in long term. Jeff, this this has been a really enlightening conversation for me just about a it just gives me the confidence I could probably go in and have a really successful midterm rental given everything that we've done in the this short-term rental space. And I'm sure a lot of the folks who are listening may maybe feel the same way. But I I think the the last question that I have for you or I guess two last questions, but one, what is maybe the biggest misconception that aspiring mentor rentals have about this industry that you want to debunk right now? that the pool of traveling nurses is both limitless and high budget and available everywhere. You know, like the the the most one of the most common complaints I I get when I talk to customers is I signed up on Furnished Finder and I've had three great tenants and none of them were nurses and I don't think you guys are doing your job. [laughter] And it's like, you know, like it's it's the expectation setting around we were so good at that for so long that it's what people expect from us, right? But the the you know there were probably 40% more traveling nurses three years ago than there are this year. Like it's going to be a fine growing market. There's a real need for them. There's a real need in healthcare, but it's not going to be what it used to be. And for it to be your only strategy, you've got to be sure you're really dialed into being great at it. It does not come for free. Well, you actually kind of answered my my second question as well is just like as we look forward into the midterm rental industry, what should folks really know about continuing to be competitive on that platform? But I feel like you hit it. So I I guess the last question that I'll leave you with then Jeff is if we kind of zoom out 30,000 foot view and we think long term and I just asked Jamie Lane the same question about the short-term rental industry. So I'm curious your take but if we look out you know and he's an economist right so he loved this question but if we look out like 30 years what trends do you see really dominating the midterm rental industry moving forward? Jamie may be able to go 30 years. I'll give you 10. Okay that's good. So, the things that I think are durably in favor of midterm rentals, you know, trends that have been around basically my whole life, and I'm at least a decade, if not more older than you, um, basically that, you know, there's a housing shortage that keeps growing. There's there's a 4.7 million single family resident shortage in the US and it's growing every year and we're not building enough. So, there's a housing shortage that needs to be solved for a that that family that big use case at Furnished Finder. uh there's an affordability crisis and that's tied to the housing shortage, but it's also about wealth bifurcation and how, you know, increasingly the middle class has less disposable income and so you need to be able to creatively help house people. Uh, I think that plays really well for a room strategy, but what it also plays really well for is like furniture is a terrible investment. And especially when you're young and you're moving it around a lot and you might be buying it used, like renting furniture, a great idea and a reason why many people go to MTRS for their long-term needs. They they move to them for three months and decide to stay in them. And I think that trend is also durable and like recently made more durable by a 25% tariff on upholstered furniture imports. like there are things that are exacerbating that trend that I think make it more likely to continue. And then the last thing would be that I don't expect to have ever have a mortgage in my life again that's at 2.3% like one of them I have now like that dynamic is not coming back which is also going to exacerbate the perception of affordability. Now it's going to be more affordability than the 80s and the 90s and then you know a little bit of the early 2000s but less affordable than what people thought about getting into it. And all of those get you to a place of like you're solving a societal need of how do you help people live more affordably when you combine furniture and the need to be moving around the country. And so there's a lot of studies around, you know, there's less mobility than there used to be. People are um switching cities less often. I think maybe people are switching residences less often, but actually are quite mobile and are going to stay mobile and advance their careers or even their personal lives three months at a time instead of picking up planning routes and doing that over and over. And that piece to me is what I found most fascinating versus my time at Verbbo and Expedia where I used to hear Brian Ches Airbnb talk about the [clears throat] new way people living and that it's going to be live anywhere and I was I kind of rolled my eyes as a Gen Xer. Now that I see the data, I think it's definitely true in millennials and will probably be true for Gen Z of like they do live kind of monthtomonth and aren't as invested in furniture and this dream of home home ownership and a permanent residence. The other fascinating thing is that 70% of wealth is in Gen X and older. 70% of all the wealth in the US and most of it's with baby boomers and boomers are both healthier and more mobile and they've got the ability to go live anywhere also. And that's going to be a fascinating dynamic of this kind of silver tsunami of are they going to go rent a place closer to their grandkids for 3 months out of the year or 6 months out of the year? Are they going to just live where it's warm in the winter and when it's warm in the summer but not be buying those houses and leave them vacant for the house they're in now? Is it going to become one of these family midterm rentals or a co-living space? Like all of that stuff points to a world where the product and the opportunity I think keeps growing for the next 10 years and then maybe you do get to a place where it's way more competitive but you've still got a first mover advantage and understand it better. And so I I'm very bullish on 3 to 5 years. I'm bullish on 10 years and I wouldn't hazard a guess beyond that. But I do think it feels more like 2010 in the shortterm game. And if you bought a short-term rental in between 2010 and 2015, you couldn't help but win, right? [laughter] Like it was just the market was not sophisticated enough to price it right. And I feel that way about a lot of the studio through two-bedroom inventory right now. There isn't a lot of institutional money chasing it. there's not the same type of uh you know professionally managed space or really sophistication there that are driving the prices up commiserate with the availability of tenants and higher rents. Jeff that was an incredible explanation and and and I can tell you spent a lot of time in this industry and just in general this is a really enjoyable conversation enlightening for me. If folks want to learn more about you where's the best place for them to go? you know, they want to learn more about the category. We we publish a podcast called Landlord Diaries that's all about independent landlords and their stories and how they got started. I'd really encourage people to check that out. If they want to learn more about me, it's definitely LinkedIn. Um, you know, I'll check comments and get back to people. And that's where you'll see a lot of, you know, my thoughts on the industry and also Furnished Finder and, you know, a lot on short-term rentals, too. It's a um, you know, it's a huge part of my life and passionate about them. And it's not like I sold the three when I got into mid-term rentals. Like, thrilled that I own them. They've been fantastic. Yeah. Well guys, Jeff Hurst, check him out. Really appreciate this conversation. That's it for today. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks so much.