In the dynamic world of monthly (midterm) rentals, every landlord strives to ensure their property stands out. Madison Miller, a seasoned traveler and landlord, offers a unique perspective that can revolutionize your hosting approach. Having stayed in five different Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) homes within a year, her experiences shed light on what transforms a rental from average to extraordinary.
Exploring diverse living spaces
Madison’s story began in Colorado Springs, where she and her husband intentionally switched neighborhoods to understand the semi-urban area's diverse living experiences. This strategic move highlights a key insight for landlords: rentals serve different purposes for different tenants. This understanding is crucial for tailoring your property to appeal to a broad range of tenants, from digital nomads to relocating families.
Create a “feels like home” experience
Madison emphasizes the importance of providing a home-like environment rather than a temporary lodging experience. Travelers are living in these spaces, cooking meals, and making memories. Here are some top insights from her stays:
Provision of essentials: Stock your rental with cleaning supplies, kitchenware, and basic toiletries. Madison finds it crucial to have tools like vacuums and kitchen storage, enhancing the tenant’s comfort and convenience.
Clarity and communication: Providing clear instructions about the property, such as the location of trash bins or shared spaces, enhances tenant experience significantly. Madison suggests everything from making a digital guide to in-house printed instructions.
Photos and listings: High-quality, clear photos play a vital role in attracting potential tenants. Madison recommends professional photography to showcase the property’s full potential. Include photos of kitchen cabinets opened wide to display available cookware, as clarity in available amenities attracts discerning tenants.
Enhancing marketing with personalization
In her own listings, Madison ensures that her description paints a detailed picture of the neighborhood’s charm. Such insightful additions can make your property stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Understanding tenant types
While one might assume the primary tenant type for monthly rentals is travel nurses, Madison’s experience reveals otherwise. Many of her tenants were families visiting grandchildren or individuals relocating and searching for a new home. Understanding that diverse tenant types often require varied hosting approaches can aid landlords in better preparing their offerings.
Blend hospitality with practicality
Madison’s dual role as a traveler-turned-landlord has equipped her with the ability to deliver thoughtful touches to her Kansas City property. Her adaptability and personalized service, often sourcing additional items via Amazon for her guests, illustrate the impact of responsive and caring hosting.
The future of monthly rentals
Madison’s journey across five Furnished Finder homes illustrates the potential of monthly rentals. As tenant diversity increases, so does the opportunity for landlords to captivate this market. Whether you’re hosting a family exploring relocation options or a digital nomad embarking on a new adventure, thoughtful hosting strategies can elevate your rental investing experience.
For more about what makes a monthly rental set the standard, listen to this episode (opens in new tab) of Furnished Finder’s podcast, Landlord Diaries (opens in new tab). Here, you’ll explore the depth of Madison's insights firsthand, ensuring your property doesn’t just meet expectations but exceeds them.
To explore more tips and tricks for managing your monthly rental, make sure to visit Furnished Finder's Landlord Resources (opens in new tab) page for a wealth of advice.
Episode 141 Transcript
In Colorado Springs, we stayed in an ADU unit and shared a backyard with our landlords. They were so sweet, but they that like our dryer wasn't drying properly. So as soon as that happened, he was quick to, I think, take off work that day and come in and check on it.
'cause I think that they were just very hands-on, very appreciative and. Very much I think love the hospitality side of their job, of their landlord experience. And they were quick to help us and get it fixed. Another perk with them is they had chickens in their backyard and they were very willing and able to always share fresh eggs.
I. I don't know. I feel like these experiences on Furnished Finder, I find my husband and I talking about all the time of, Hey, you remember when we lived with and when we rented at house, like as landlords? I feel like it's burned in our brain now that I don't know, you just make a big impression.
Welcome to The Landlord Diaries, where we talk about midterm rentals and the opportunities behind them. We'll share landlord stories, talk about maximizing investment potential, and discuss how to live the very best landlord life. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Furnished Finder, the leader and largest online marketplace for midterm rentals.
Remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy our content. Madison Miller has stayed in five different Furnished Finder homes in just one year, giving her a unique perspective on the differences between an average monthly rental and a great one. In this episode, we will discuss. Discuss what makes certain spaces feel like home.
The questions every traveler should ask and how her experiences as a guest have shaped the way she manages her own Furnished Finder property in Kansas City. Madison's insights will help you level up your rental game and attract the kind of guess landlords rave about. So Madison, thanks for being here today.
How are you? I'm good. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. Yes ma'am. Because you have such a unique perspective having stayed in five Furnished Finder homes. We'll focus on that towards the beginning of the episode and then we will continue to allow you to tell your landlord story as well.
But first off, let's give a little teaser. Has it been nice to have your property working for you while you travel? Yes, I feel I really rarely even think about my property. I feel like it's peace of mind. I know right now it's rented out four plus months in advance, so it's something I don't really have to even think about.
So how long have you and your husband been staying in Furnished Finder homes? I know five in a year, but how long have y'all been traveling? Yeah. So we actually have been traveling and renting out our home. For the last two years, since June of 23. We backpacked abroad for eight months and then came back and started living in furnish binders as of March in 24.
So that's when we started our journey with furnish binder. So Madison, you've stayed in three different feren, three different Furnished Finder homes in Colorado Springs. So what made you want to try multiple different spots in one city? Yeah. So for us, my husband had gotten an opportunity to move us out to Colorado Springs.
And so we both got stationary jobs out there. However, we just really, were still living on the thrill of traveling and we're missing the backpacking life. And so we were like if we move there, let's plan to move into different neighborhoods. Knowing that Colorado Springs zip codes span.
Basically hour apart. So it's huge. And so we were trying to debate if we live there, where do we wanna live? So throughout those eight months in Colorado Springs, we lived in three different. Totally different neighborhoods. And tried three different areas just to really understand the area and where we would wanna ever live if we did potentially live there.
I love that. I think that's such a great use case, and I think that's something that all of our landlords need to really remember is that people are gonna be renting your properties for all sorts of different uses and purposes. And it might not always be a job or a medical worker or even a relocating family who knows where they wanna be, but they're just waiting for their house to be ready or to close or whatever.
It might just be like you're trying to figure out where you wanna go. So I think that's, I think that's fantastic. It's also a really good idea for anybody who's has a property and is Hey, maybe I wanna. Move and live here, or maybe you wanna move there, try it out. Yeah. Yeah. What's the, yeah, why not?
The market has slowed down. Yeah. Take your time and try it out. I think that is awesome. Okay, Madison, I really wanna dig into the lessons you've learned from living in so many different Furnished Finder rentals and how you've applied those to your own rental and just things we can share with our landlords.
It feels like a peek behind the curtain into what? What do tenants really look for? What do they like? How can we improve? So tell us some things that you wish that landlords understood about monthly travelers. Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway that I've taken from living in all of these and then having our own space rented out.
Is truly realizing that people are living here. It's not a hotel. You're living here day in and day out. You are cooking meals, you are cleaning up after yourself. You want it to feel like you're home. And so some big things that I feel like I've, like learned or looked for as soon as I walk into a place is.
Do they supply us with items to clean our space? I feel like, you go into a hotel, there's not gonna be a vacuum or a mop or a spray bottle and stuff like that to clean. And so I like to know there's not like an a locked cabinet with all those things. There's an open cabinet for us as tenants to utilize to keep our space clean.
'cause now your house is my house for a little bit. And so I feel like that's a huge thing that I've. Made sure I've implemented into my house that there's a vacuum, a little robot vacuum, a shovel for winter time things like that, just to keep it tidy and more so to encourage them to keep it tidy.
Yeah I think that's awesome. I think even if you don't supply, paper towels or Windex or counter spray for the whole state. At least giving people a start. And those tools, like a mop and a vacuum are key. I've had tenants before ask me really specifically, do you have a vacuum?
And I'm like, of course I have a vacuum thinking in my head. I want you to vacuum while you're there. Yeah. Places. And they haven't, right? And they've been like, oh, I've been used to traveling with my own vacuum because. The past few places I've been at don't have, and I like this picture in my head, comes up with someone traveling in their car with a vacuum taking up the whole backseat, and I'm like, yeah.
Oh my gosh, no. Yeah, you can. You can use my vacuum. Please just supply it. So making sure things like that are there. I feel like some other things that I've thought of and have made sure I've implemented into our house is having a ton a ton of like containers for food and such, like leftovers meal prepping things like that for nurses.
But not only anybody, if they work from home, they still might want a meal prep and have containers for leftovers. So making sure, you run to Costco, run to Sam's Club, get that quick $20 pack of. Glass containers and it's quick and easy. Throw it in there and they have it. And then obviously touching on, yeah, making sure that they have a few days worth, if not a week's worth of toiletries, things like that, just to get them off on their first few days.
And then outside of that, I feel like really being clear with instructions on trash and things like that. So knowing we've lived in various different kinds of units, whether it's an ADU in someone's backyard or it's a basement apartment that's fully built out but above, below somebody else or an entire home to ourself.
Understanding, am I sharing this trash can with I. Your whole household and ours, or is this all just for us and just knowing when those days are so we can all be on the same track. Things like that, that you don't really always think about until you're in the moment and you're like, oh, what do I do with all this?
Clarity is definitely your friend and I think a good test is go through your house every day as if you're living there and think about the stuff you do that you're doing. 'cause you know how to do it right. You know what the trash day is, you know what the wifi password is, what the quirky light switches that only turns on if you flip it three times or whatever it is, right? If those are things that people need to know about your property, I like to use the rule of three and document it and communicate it three times. And I think that might feel like overkill to some people, but.
In today's world, we are ver all like processing more information on a day-to-day basis than we ever processed before. And we have very short attention spans and a lot going on. So I like to make, a digital guide if you can. Super quick and easy. And that can be like. A note stock or a Word doc.
It doesn't have to be super fancy. You can make some signs. You can also put it in a text or an email. You can use your house rules within Furnished Finder. But I like to communicate it in three different ways because then the odds of someone be like, oh man, I'm sorry. I realize you texted that to me now, but I just didn't see that text.
It's like you're setting everybody up. For more success, because I'm sure you don't wanna be messaging someone in the middle of a Tuesday evening Hey, where do I take the trash out at? Like you wanna. You wanna know? Yeah. And Madison, there are a couple things that for you, has been a difference for an average rental versus a great one has been natural light.
And you've learned basements are not your thing. So why don't you tell us about that balance? Yeah, we definitely learned through the process, especially of those three houses in Colorado Springs bouncing around. But definitely others that we. Had done one apartment basement stay where we were in the basement of a full-blown house.
It was built out, it was about 1300 square feet. It was a large apartment. However we were above or we were below others. And we learned quickly that although it was built out for us, it wasn't. Ideal in the way of noise and pets above us. And things of that sort that we just learned weren't our cup of tea, which is okay.
That was the point of it. And that's the point of Furnished Finder when you can play with it a little bit. And so now when we're looking at places, we definitely love to look for those large windows, natural light, making sure that there's a few windows in the living spaces like your kitchen or living room, obviously.
And then if there's any kind of like outdoor area that we can utilize for ourselves. And I think y'all actually like smaller spaces as a couple, right? Is like 500 square feet your favorite? We squeeze between like the 700 square feet, like the sweet spot. Okay. If we can get a place we've stayed in as small as I believe it was right at 500 and we have our Prius that we take everywhere.
And so all of our stuff. Fits in our Prius. So we don't have a lot coming with us. We don't have a moving van when we go. We really try to stay as minimalist as possible. And that, I remember we were in that apartment, we're like, that's, this is the tiniest we can go. 'cause there was only two closets and we were like, we gotta squeeze everything.
That's impressive. That's that. Like I'm just picturing you going down the road in a Prius, like very much like Christmas vacation style with everything stacked in the back. That's impressive. But yeah that's something for our landlords to really remember is like you guy. Travelers like you are coming with things, but you're also relying on these furnished properties to have things like extra blankets and supplies to make cookies on a Sunday morning if you want to, or extra.
Like all of these things you're looking for us to have. So it's like some people come, if they're flying, they're just coming with a suitcase or two. Yeah. And what are some of those things that is like a must have for you? That's a deal breaker that you're not gonna stay if it doesn't have these items.
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Two big things. I think when we're looking through and we're really scouring Furnished Finder are we're a couple, so we've learned in like the kitchen space, we really appreciate a full-blown stove oven. I. Not a cooktop, but a full stove an oven, everything. We have stayed in one that it was just a little glass cooktop.
We did that for two months. And you can only feel like you're camping for so long. And so we had to revert back to really only narrowing down to a full oven and everything. The other thing is we've learned, we know we want a queen sized bed. So I think that narrowing in on and understanding what.
Size beds. Some of these places have, 'cause some only have doubles, which a double versus a queen is very different when there's two people in a bed. Those are our kind of two things that we look for. Queen size bed and a full oven stove. You can even search by the king bed filter on Furnished Finder.
So if you want everyone to know what's most important to travelers, go to the map on Furnished Finder and look at the filters. We. Keep those up to date so that what are travelers looking for? Most washer dryer, king beds are on there, but there are 300,000 travelers nationwide, over 4 million housing requests every month.
So just know there's travelers of all types. If yours does have a cooktop or doesn't have a washer dryer, that doesn't mean it's not going to be successful. That just means that it's not one of the most sought after items and your price and the fact that it's an entire space versus a room rental might be what the the benefit is that really helps sell your place.
'cause for those that listen to the show, y'all know I do have some smaller. Bases one's 300 square feet, one's 600 square feet, and they don't have all the proper full kitchen, et cetera. Don't have a washer dryer. And they're doing great with over 95% occupancy. Just keep in mind, what are your perks?
And this is a perfect segue to. How do you as a host and a traveler with so much experience, make your property stand out effectively in your marketing? I feel like with posting and keeping things up to date, I feel like with our listing we like to make sure there's clear photos. We did have a professional photographer come in and do clear photos for that, making sure that in your listing we have photos of the cabinets to see what's inside, what kind of, dishes, what kind of, containers, cookware, stuff like that, truly listing so they can see, okay, this place does have a crockpot. That's good to know. I'm just very I wanna see it to make sure it's there. Making sure if there is a washer and dryer, we obviously have a picture of our washer and dryer there, so they're aware, they see it, they put it to the listing.
And then just like you said, doing your three kind of checks, making sure that we are, filling out that detail of the neighborhood. So the neighborhood that my my French fund is in like a elm tree filled neighborhood with a walking path. And just some great perks that we've really loved when we lived there.
And so really highlighting some of those things about the surrounding areas. And then, like triple checking everything, making sure in our property, we have a whole binder that says all the other information that's already been sent to them through a message or through a text. But again, going over the wifi, the trash dates, the important things.
And then I. Any like neighborhood news that I get, I'll try to make sure that I reach out to the tenant who's there at that time and let them know, Hey, they're gonna check on the water, or Hey, someone's gonna be by in the backyard doing this, or lawn care guys coming by. So everyone knows and they're not startled by somebody.
Good. I love that. I love that you're just making everything very clear. Yeah. And tenants who are staying on a monthly basis, appreciate that so much. I love what you said about taking pictures with the cabinets open. And I think that also pertains to, if you get the question from a tenant lead or a tenant who's inquiring two times about oh, hey, is it a rollin shower or walkin shower, or is there a bathtub?
If you do, that's telling you that you need more clarity in your listing, right? That's telling you that you're missing a photo of that, you're missing a description of that, or maybe you need to call it out stronger. Anytime you hear those types of questions, those are clues like from people like Madison, like this is important to me.
Can you show it off more? Actually, our one midterm rental that is a single family home, that's our larger property that we rent out. We are really, we really designed it for families. We have a whole cabinet that's like kid dishware, right? Like plastic cups, plastic cutler, really stuff they can't break.
We all know that's the best with kids. And one picture that we have that has gotten a lot of great feedback is just the inside of that cabinet and it's showing people like, Hey, I'm ready for kids. And we've put in the thought. Here it is. You don't even ask, have to ask those questions. So it also just says what kind of landlord you are and that you've put those thoughtful touches into it.
And I think the fact that you're including, photos of the community or the outside of your favorite spaces, I think that's really thoughtful as well. And something that other landlords could do pretty easily. Yeah. Show off what you love about the community and the area these travelers could be coming from.
Anywhere. And they could be, this could be somewhere where they're, they have to go because that's where their work assignment put them or they hand chose to go. So I think that's just, I think that's huge that you touched on that. While we're looking at Nationwide, Furnished Finder has been around since 2014.
We are in all 50 states. Like I said, over 4 million housing searches, monthly and 20 million site. Visits monthly. So you wanna make sure and stand out and know who your tenant type is, which is a large variety on Furnished Finder. The largest traveler type right now is the traveling for work and digital nomads travel nurses and traveling medical professions come in second, some things to keep in mind when you're looking at how should I furnish a, my space, whether it's a small studio or a three or four bedroom, is the average tenants per booking on Furnished Finder is 1.6. So we're gonna say that's one to two people per stay. And then there. Typically staying for around 90 days.
So storage is super important, right? So that they can have a place, like we've been saying to if they bring their own vacuum or bring their own please don't make them bring their own vacuum as we laid forth. And if a guest asks for something, do your best to provide it. For 'em if it's within reason.
So those are some things to keep in mind. 30% of travelers travel would like to travel with their pets because it's months at a time. It's not days at a time. So when you are furnishing your space, keep that in mind. Do you have a work from home space? Do Is your wifi strong? How are you helping these remote workers, digital nomads, travel nurses, relocating families have.
The comforts of home while they are in your home. When you are traveling Madison, you have a list of questions that you've learned to put together and carefully read the details. What are some of those questions that you like to ask when you're traveling to make sure that it's going to be a successful stay?
Yes. So a couple of those questions off the top of my head right now. I know in our most recent stay we again like to clarify those two things for us. Obviously, if we can see that there's a stove or oven in there, in the pictures, we know that's there. I always now, 'cause I've made the mistake before where we have booked a place with a full-sized bed and I didn't realize it, and we stayed there for two months with it.
I now, no matter what, even if I see it, just clarify, Hey, is this a queen or a king-sized bed? I know it says it, but just say yes so I know. So I always clarify again, the bed. Clarifying washer and dryer, if that's something that we're obviously looking for, but clarifying that. Going off of that, we like to clarify and ask are all of those utilities included?
Sometimes on the Furnished Finder listings, there's a spot for US landlords to put that in. But some people leave it blank. Some people say it incorrectly and then they're listing, they're like, it's all included. So really clarifying that gray area. Hey, are all these utilities included or is there an extra.
Fee that I need to pay each month for some utilities. Again, questioning the living situation, if it's a whole house by itself, is trash just for us or do we share and do we have designated bins for just myself and my husband? And then I, we don't travel with any pets right now. However, my I.
House I allow pets in for tenants to come for my rentals, but I do like to ask if there has been pets in the area or is there, are there pets next door to us if it's a duplex style, just so I can come in with those expectations already. Understood. Those are my big questions that I feel like clarify a lot, but then the response from the landlord also tells me a lot more like how they respond helps me narrow in on where I want to live.
Yeah I think that's fantastic. The theme here is clarity, right? And I think that's just really important for every landlord to remember is that someone is looking to live at your property. So what can you do when you're looking at your listing to make it a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more clear, a little bit?
Easier to understand and you have to know that travelers are looking at, they're probably considering a lot of different properties. So how do you make yours stand out from the get go? So I think that is huge. Madison, what makes you stop your scroll when you're looking at Furnished Finder listings and you're, maybe you're looking for San Diego and you're scrolling what makes you stop and go, Ooh.
I wanna click on that and learn more about that property. I feel like honestly, to some extent it, I do think it's the picture quality. Some people just take pictures of their phones and that's okay. But I do feel like if you put forth that whatever amount, 150, $200 to really get a professional photo taken and it looks good and it looks crisp, I look at those.
If it's on a Android phone or it's just on a phone, and it's really not the clearest photo. I get a little bit weary. And then second thing that I look for is I do go and read through those bios about those landlords. And I think that tho that's the other thing that I love to understand just about them a little bit more.
I. Definitely. This is so great because I feel like I've been in broken record talking about photos for years. But it's so important. It's yeah. So important. Like guys, you're literally trying to get someone like Madison to stop their scroll. Take the time. And the investment is not much.
And I love how you're able to view this as a landlord too, because it is not like real estate photography is, you're not talking about thousands of dollars. You're talking about a hundred, $200. You make that back so quickly because your property stands out. And I also, it's really encouraging and interesting to hear that you do look at the landlord profile.
Because that's something that I always look at too when I'm looking For me, it's looking up if you're searching on a hotel tell me more about the hotel and not just the room. Yeah. This is more tell me more about the landlord. And that's your chance to shine, right?
That's your chance to say like, why are you doing this? Why do you enjoy it? Do you love hospitality? What's your part of the story? So I think that's. I think that's great. And those are like really low hanging fruit too, right? Like those are not super expensive or challenging things to do. Those are things that everybody should be able to do.
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So Madison, when you're hosting now that you've, I think you've been hosting around the same amount of time that you've been traveling, so they went hand in hand. Tell us about that and how your guest experience has shaped how you run your properties. Yeah, I feel like I just have a clear, again, clear picture now on how it feels to be on the other side of a rental property.
And then I do have to give a good little shout out to my lovely property manager who does really hands-on stuff as far as being in Kansas City where my property is located. And so she handles the forefront of things, but even just setting things up I feel like with my experience now, I've had the ability to add in those personal touches or quickly get on Amazon when I see someone.
Says that they would love something or need something. For instance, I had a door that's near our entryway, but near the like mud room, I would say. And I had a tenant there and she had mentioned her mom was the tenant and she was like, Hey, I feel like I. She can be seen in at night maybe.
And for my husband and I, we didn't think twice on this. But as soon as they mentioned that I went on Amazon and looked up a really quick installation curtain, sent it there. The next day, she was able to go over there, help her mom put it up, and that was solved. So I feel like it's just putting your mind to like, if I was in that person's shoes, what would I want?
What would I want for my mom staying in a place on their own? So just the quickness I feel like to respond. Is instilled in me now. I love that. And we have tools for that today, right? Like you said, like Amazon, like finding a solution that makes such a big impression. There's nothing, there's no way to make a better impression on a tenant than they get there and they're like, Hey, the toast is broken.
And you're like, great. Another one will be at your doorstep tomorrow. Utilize that. It's so easy with. Yeah, use it and make your impression because I have to imagine that as a tenant that has to make a big impression. Has a landlord ever done anything out of their way like that, didn't take them long, but that really made you feel welcome and comfortable like that?
Yeah. We in Colorado Springs, we stayed with a lovely, we stayed in an ADU unit and shared a backyard with our landlords. They were so sweet, but they, that like our dryer wasn't drying properly. So as soon as that happened, he was quick to, I think, take off work that day and come in and check on it.
'cause I think that they were just very hands-on, very appreciative and very much I think loved the hospitality side of their job, of their landlord experience. And they were quick to help us and get it fixed. Another perk with them is they had chickens in their backyard and they were very willing and able to always share fresh eggs.
I don't know. I feel like these experiences on Furnished Finder, I find my husband and I talking about all the time of, Hey, remember when we lived with and when we rented at house, like as landlords, I feel like it's. Burned in our brain. Now that, I don't know, you just make a big impression, so hopefully we understand that.
One thing I wanted to circle back to is we're talking about really a lot of Furnished Finder properties are self-managed, which is nice because you. You typically have four stays a year, so it's not necessarily hard to manage your own property. So what led you to choose to have a self-manage to have a manager involved with your property versus self-managing it while you're on the road?
Yeah, so that started up, basically the biggest kicker for that is a, we met Ashley, my property manager. She was very helpful, very, I guess relaxed on the whole process when we began to decide, Hey, I'm gonna rent out this house that I have. But the biggest reason for having her was the beginning.
In the beginning of all this, we were actually across seas. We backpacked through like Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. So we were nowhere near our property if something happened and while we actually were gone. She was just, she was able to be at our house within a few minutes if she needed to be.
And when we were gone, I know our water heater had gone out. And so she was able to be there. She was able to connect all of the context to get somebody over there to fix it. We were in a whole different time zone, so that's where utilizing people like Ashley and property managers really did.
Stand out and make sense to me at the time. I love that. And guys if you're like thinking about having a monthly rental and you're not sure but what if I can't handle the management? Remember that you're not doing four turnovers a week, right? Like it's drastically simpler than, say, a short term rental or a traditional Airbnb, things like that.
But also you can get. Help in different ways, right? Like you've got your property manager that's like pretty hands off, which is fantastic. Yeah. You can also have someone, like for our portfolio we have just quote unquote boots on the ground and it happens to be my mom and my brother, right?
Yeah. Where it's like, Hey, I've taken care of everything except I can't physically go there and put a key in the lockbox because I'm a thousand miles away. Can you go do that? There's solutions for all of these things that are not super complicated. And you can hop in places like the Furnished Finder Facebook group or connect with another landlord in your area.
Just you can send 'em a message on Furnished Finder, right? Like people in this. Are so welcoming to helping each other and us all getting better together. So I love this and I love all the ideas that you've brought, and hopefully this has encouraged everybody to put on their tenant hat for a second and look at your listing and look at your processes and everything through the eyes of a tenant, because that can be such a powerful practice to do.
You've had quite a few unique tenant types, like it's worked out where you've got one main kind of tenant type and it's not travel nurses. What's your main tenant type? A lot of my main tenants are, honestly, they're coming to the Kansas City area and looking for houses and or just coming to visit like their grandchildren.
That's a lot of the times the people that I have. So I haven't had a single travel nurse yet, which as a travel nurse, I was like, oh, I'm gonna have tons of those. But that's my main tenant type is people relocating or coming to visit family for an extended period of time. Nice. And because they're looking to potentially buy and don't know necessarily where they wanna buy, how long are they typically staying with you?
Yeah, usually they do two months. And then if they've communicated with us in the beginning, Hey, we're coming here to look at this house and this is our price range or X, y, Z we'll keep in cahoots with them every 30 to 60 days to understand are you gonna be extending? And so we had one.
Tenant who extended for, I think as long as five months she was there, I wanna say. And so we just kept in contact with her and as soon as she knew her closing date, we would move things back to suit her. What would you recommend is one thing that each person does to either make an improvement on their midterm, monthly rental or to get started and let them know how they can connect with you?
I feel like the biggest thing and way to get started is to just look out into your community see like she said, on the Facebook pages, but also in your local community. Are there real estate like landlord meetups that are happening near you that you could pop into? Are there coffee meetups that you could go into and, take that first leap.
It's really uncomfortable that once you make that first connection, it can lead you down a lot of different paths. So I think that was one thing that my husband and I did was really get out in the community in Kansas City and it opened our whole minds to all things real estate and landlord investing.
Yeah. I and take one thing at a time, right? Don't go to these meetups and be like, oh my gosh, now I need to do flips and I need to do this, and I need to do this. Or listen to a podcast like this and be like, okay, I've now I've gotta change this and this, and I've gotta buy a vacuum and everything.
Like one thing, just, if you can just improve one intention, just go there with that one intention at a time. You're gonna get. It's gonna be fantastic, right? The demand is there. People like Madison are traveling and they want to stay at your place. So yes. And how should people connect with you, Madison, if they'd like to ask you any questions or reach out.
Yeah, if you'd like to reach out, you can find me on Instagram. It's at Let's get out town with an underscore at the end. Love it. That's cute. And reminder, if you wanna connect with other fa other Furnished Finder hosts, just pick up the phone and call 'em. Like Katie said, most of us are willing to give advice.
It's a very open community that just loves talking about the midterm, monthly rental strategy. So don't he hesitate. To, go look at the listings in your area and pick up the phone and say, Hey, how's your Furnished Finder business been going? Thanks for being here, everyone. We will catch you again soon and stay tuned for all things midterm monthly rentals.