For years, Airbnb was the default playbook for furnished rental hosts. It offered visibility, booking volume, and a simple way to get started in short-term rentals. But more hosts are now reconsidering whether that model still gives them the control, margins, and consistency they want.
That shift is exactly what Jeff Hurst, CEO of Furnished Finder, unpacked in a recent podcast conversation (opens in new tab) on Short Term Rental Secrets. His argument was not that short-term rentals are dead. It was that many hosts have started to realize they are not just hosts. They are business owners. And once you start looking at your rental through that lens, midterm rentals often become much more attractive. Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) specializes in 30+ day stays, allows direct landlord-tenant communication, and uses a flat annual listing model rather than commissions or booking fees. The company says it now serves more than 300,000 listings across the U.S. and over 15 million annual traveler searches.
Midterm rentals appeal to owners who want to run a stronger business
One of the most useful points from the episode is Jeff’s distinction between being a great host and being a great business owner. Those are not always the same thing. A great host may overinvest in amenities, absorb unnecessary costs, or make emotional decisions that feel generous but hurt the economics of the property. A strong business owner thinks differently. They look at margins, channel mix, pricing strategy, and long-term risk.
That is part of why some owners are shifting away from Airbnb-only thinking. Nightly platforms can generate demand, but they can also come with more restrictions, more fees, more platform dependence, and more pressure to keep up in a growing amenity and review arms race. Midterm rentals offer a different value proposition: fewer turnovers, longer stays, and a model built around practical housing demand instead of constant hospitality churn. Furnished Finder positions itself around exactly that need, describing monthly rentals as flexible 30+ day stays for corporate travelers, relocating families, travel nurses, academics, and digital nomads rather than vacationers.
Why more hosts are looking beyond Airbnb
For many landlords, the move toward midterm rentals is not just about avoiding platform fees. It is about reducing fragility in the business.
Short-term rentals still work well in the right markets, especially when the property has a scarce geographic advantage like beachfront, lakefront, or ski-in, ski-out access. But for many other hosts, the math has changed. Supply has grown, regulations have tightened, and competition has become more expensive. Furnished Finder’s own materials frame monthly rentals as a reliable middle ground between long-term and short-term leasing, while Jeff’s interview emphasized that this category is especially compelling for landlords who want fewer turnovers and more stable occupancy.
That does not mean every Airbnb should become a midterm rental. It does mean many owners are realizing that some properties are better suited for living than for vacationing. If a home is near a hospital, university, strong public schools, major employers, or long-term construction projects, it may be a stronger fit for 30+ day stays than for weekend guests. That is where Furnished Finder’s model starts to make more sense.
Furnished Finder is no longer just for travel nurses
One of the biggest misconceptions Jeff addressed is the idea that Furnished Finder is only useful for travel nurse housing. That reputation came from a period when travel nurse demand surged, but the tenant base today is broader. Furnished Finder says its largest traveler audience is actually corporate travelers, while travel nurses are the second-largest segment, and demand from other groups is growing even faster.
That broader renter mix is a big reason more hosts are taking a second look. Monthly renters can include relocating families, academics, construction workers, consultants, insurance-displaced households, and renters who want to try a new city before buying. Those are different use cases from the classic Airbnb traveler, and they often bring different expectations as well. They are looking for comfort, function, and value over time, not a weekend experience.
For landlords, that can open up new opportunity. It can also change how you think about furnishing and pricing. You may not need luxury design, game rooms, or high-cost amenities to compete. You may simply need a clean, well-located, well-priced property that works for real life.
Why the low annual fee makes it easy to test
One reason this model is resonating with hosts is that the barrier to trying it is relatively low. Furnished Finder’s current pricing materials say landlords pay a flat annual subscription, with no commissions and no surprise fees, and note that the average stay is around 90 days. The platform’s support materials also state that one booking can often cover the entire subscription cost.
That makes the decision easier for many owners. If a property is a fit for monthly demand, the cost to test the channel is relatively minor compared with the revenue potential of even one successful 30+ day stay. For hosts already used to furnishing, managing, and marketing properties, that can be an appealing way to diversify beyond Airbnb without taking on major additional risk. Consider listing your property on Furnished Finder (opens in new tab).
Final thoughts
Hosts are not ditching Airbnb because short-term rentals suddenly stopped working. They are reconsidering Airbnb because many are becoming sharper operators. They are thinking more carefully about fees, regulations, turnover, market saturation, and what kind of rental business they actually want to run.
That is where midterm rentals stand out. They give landlords another way to use furnished housing, one built around longer stays, real housing demand, and more direct control. Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) was built for that specific niche, and its platform, pricing, and tenant mix all reflect that focus.
Stop thinking like a host first and start thinking like a business owner.
Transcript
On a technical perspective, nothing is perfect. Perfect has given me a progress. You find someone who solved it before and you find a way for us to solve it faster. When you think about being a better host, I think the most important thing to anchor on is that you are in charge of your own business. There is a difference between being a business owner and a host. Arguably, the world's greatest host would be a pretty terrible business owner. They would invest in things that don't make sense and they would lose money on those things and they would make decisions that make a guest feel great but may not make any economic sense. What's going on STR nation? This is your host and brother from the mother Emani here with the man himself Mr. Mike Riley. What's going on Ry? Uh I'm doing awesome man. Uh big news in the STR world last week. uh whether you think the big beautiful bill is beautiful or ugly, uh 100% bonus depreciation is coming back for uh for short-term rental investors. So, uh that's that's huge for people who are working W2s right now or have a lot of business income and you want to reduce your taxable income by investing in short-term rentals. It's back, you know, 100%'s back. It was phasing out. Um but I think it's really good for for business and short-term rentals in general. So, that's some big news. But we had an awesome podcast today, too. Yeah. Yeah. We had Jeff Hurst. He's the president and CEO of Furnished Finder, the new one. We've had the president CEO in in the past. But Jeff was really fascinating. He has a background. He was the chief operating officer of Expedia Brands and the co-lead of the Expedia group marketing. Before that, he was the president of VRB, which apparently now you can say either one. I've always said VRBO. He also did. So, it was really interesting. chief strategy officer at Homeaway as well. And so pretty much somebody that's been in our industry long before most of us and brought an interesting um interesting perspect why he chose to you know after being without a job for 2 years once he exited Expedia. He took some time to reflect and then decided to go to Furnished Finder because he really thought there was um a part of the marketplace that they are really looking to service in a very big way. And so if you like me um have kind of written them off due to how unfriendly the platform was, I don't know. I think this interview is going to make us all reconsider it. And the other big thing for me was always like it's only for traveling nurses. Traveling nurses have no money. Um and he actually told us that 75% of their travelers are not traveling nurses, which is something that like I wasn't expecting at all. I thought there would be like you know a good 60 70%. Uh but that wasn't the case. So overall, it was a great interview. I really enjoyed him. Yeah. Yeah, I did too. Just his being in the industry for a long time. When you think about VRBO, we're like, "Hey, VRBO's kind of like that old that old giant, right? That didn't really change much. Their platform's like still kind of clunky." Um, and he was there for a lot of the change. So, he saw a lot of it. And so, we asked him some tough questions just on how do you see Furnished Finder, which is kind of similar in my opinion, like their platform is kind of clunky. How do you see that changing over over the next, you know, year? what are you guys focused on? Um, and he was he was he has a unique perspective from being at VRBO, but then also seeing what Airbnb has been doing and then knowing his market as well for Furnished Finder and then giving tools to hosts, which he kind of teased this on how much they can make as well, like some some AirDNA type of data tools to like project, hey, this is how much you can be making as a midterm rental. So, we talked about that, too. Um, but overall like you know for uh for a guy who's you know been in the industry a long time, he was also just kind of cool to hang out with and uh I felt like I was in just in a room with you know uh kind of like my my like uncle, you know, my very successful uncle. It was it was cool to hang out with him and uh looking forward to to getting to know him more in the future too. Yeah, for sure. And that was one of the things that he shared with us in terms of like lessons from leadership in terms of always being accessible and always making sure that again I think we all have this like myified idea of like what a leader is supposed to be. And I went to a really really nice restaurants this week with one of my best friends who's a chef in Miami and he's here for holiday too. And just seeing how somebody is trying to get Am Michelin star cooks and how in the front line they are it's a refreshing look on like leadership and I think as hospitality people we we got away from that in a sense right like we and us especially right as secrets we teach systems we teach SOPs we teach how to get out of your business how to do it in 6 hours 4 hours a week and watching this guy cook the other day it was an open kitchen so you could see it from the and just the excitement and the fluid that he was in and just how he would look at everything the kitchen was bringing him. It's like I saw it multiple times like no do it again leading from the front line like that. It was a very refreshing thing and I think Jeff is bringing that to for niche finders and so I'm really excited and I I don't know dude I wish him I wish him good luck is sometimes we get CEO of companies that come on and you're like it was a little bland instead this one was super fun and so to quit the ranting without further ado we welcome Jeff Hurst from Furnishinder on the show my pleasure to be here very excited to get to speak with everybody yeah so Jeff you've had quite an extensive career and now you're at Furnished Finder. Give us a little elevator pitch of like what your life has been up until now and what has landed you at if you go back across the almost five decades I'd say native born Texan went to UT Austin moved out to San Francisco to work in uh consulting and get closer to technology and eventually I moved back to Austin to join Humble Life. That was when it was a private company. They owned VRBO, VBO at the time and I was excited to be a part of it because I believed in the product. You know, living in San Francisco, we spent a ton of time in Tahoe and in wine country and even out here yuseimity in these homes and I just thought it was an awesome way to travel. And so I really joined because I believed in the consumer proposition of it. and then uh kind of stayed and worked my way up through Homeaway was the chief strategy officer when we sold to Expedia was the chief commercial officer at um Homeaway VRBO and then ultimately the president and then after that I was the uh COO of Expedia and ran growth marketing and analytics and kind of the general management function for so Brands and so you know I'm very much a long-term travel person when I left Expedia I took some time off and was introduced to the founders of Furnished Finder which embarrassingly and probably like many people in your audience. I had no idea what the hell this brand was. You know, I was running one of the biggest brands in the world for vacation rentals and had never heard of it. And I got to know the founders and got to know the value proposition and it reminded me of yestery year, you know, and that it was a simpler service model with a clearer value proposition. And I didn't think I wanted to be in travel anymore, but the more I got to know the team and the company, I decided that this was a good thing for me to do next. And so we worked with a uh private equity company to get the founders some liquidity and they stepped aside so they could be on the board and I could bring in a team to you know really kind of reinvent the platform and the product and try and build a you know a credible marketplace for monthly rentals in a way that I don't think Airbnb really serves it well and I don't think kind of the Zillow Apartments.com: Apartments and Homes for Rent serve it well. So there's a niche that we think we can do a good job at and been hard to work at it for over a year and a half. you know, lots of progress and a few steps backwards and see where we get. Love it. What's something that you're really excited about that you guys have been working on for the last year and a half? You know, it's uh some of it feels kind of like um some of a lot of it's foundational. You know, we're very much overhauling the technology and modernizing the experience. And so, like I'm really excited we have a new search page. It's not a search page that's better than most of the search pages that you'd experience on Airbnb or VRBO or Zillow, but it's a heck of a lot better than what we used to have. And you know, we really compete on basically providing, you know, average, say it's a $2,000 monthly rental, average rentals three months. So $6,000 ticket, you know, you're going to pay 10 to 15% in fees on an OTAA. Like that adds up. For a lot of our customers, that's a week's take-home pay. Like we want to make it easy to take a week of take-home pay and put it in, you know, the tenant and the landlord's pocket. And I'm excited in how we modernize the experience, but like I don't expect us to be, we don't walk around talking about tech innovation and how we can revolutionize travel. We walk around like, can we make this an hour easier? Can we make it a minute easier? Can we help people connect and do it in a really cost-effective way? And so the next thing we're building is messaging. We'll have a really modern messaging platform just to help people communicate faster. But it's uh, you know, we're not in rocket science, Phil. We're in catchup because we've got great inventory and we've got a good value proposition. We just want to get more people to know about it. I love that. Jeff, I had a a call recently with somebody that was thinking about joining the mastermind and he had a really heavy kind of tech background. And one of the things he was stuck on was this thing that on a technical perspective, he's like nothing is perfect. So none of the PMS's are perfect. None of these pricing things are perfect. And it was a very interesting conversation for me because in my ignorance, I find a lot of things to be pretty good. And so, how does somebody like yourself play that balance of like, we're not gonna spend the time to revolutionize this, let's just make it better than it was. And then maybe some things you're like, this is definitely worth maybe thinking outside of the box and really revolutionizing. Yeah. Um, you know, a big mantra around here is perfect is the enemy of progress. And so, you know, you find someone who solved it before and you find a way for us to solve it faster. And you really picky about when you want to do something that's better because the consumer doesn't and and I think people who've been in technology a long time get wrapped up in it. The consumer typically doesn't think about how good is the tech. They think about how good is how good's the product. Most of our product is 300,000 homes that landlords have trusted us to find tenants with. That's like 75% of the value proposition. And our job is to help you find that home. And there's a lot of marketplaces out there that have done creative things and helped solve it. But at the root of it all, for as much as Airbnb talks about design and product, the reason the product's good is they got over 4 million homes and that's all there is to it. You know, it's not that much better than the others. You know, they've got some quirky things and it's kind of fun. But so for us, the way we think about walking the line is we, you know, it think of it as like it's like utility value. How can we do something that creates utility and then is making it innovative or great more utility than doing the next thing fast? And so as an example, we want to fix messaging and then we want to fix reviews and then we want to um invest more in how we make it easier to like manage and stay. Each of those things could be a place of innovation. But for us, we're approaching each of them as like, let's just get there fast. Something people expect because the real innovation is that you can save 10 to 15% on a $6,000, you know, three months stay. So, question for you on that. The user experience for a host, right? Somebody who's got a property, a landlord. It's been I just looked at it. I've used it for I've used Furnished Finder for the last like 5 years. I just looked at it again because my team does it now. It looks a heck of a lot better. How do you how do you determine how much time and and effort and money you spend on the experience for the host versus the effort and time you spend on the experience for the traveler? Um it's uh it's actually really different than how we thought about it at VRBO. And so I'd start there, but you think of it as like I'm trying to optimize people's time. To me, value propositions are all about time and money. And so I'm trying to help tenants and landlords save time and I'm trying to help them save money. And I think we're really good at saving them money yet and not great at saving them time. We spend more time on the tenant side so far because the tenant is the one who's if they you know if they get to the site and it's not working they're probably not going to come back and so we need to make that really smooth so we can connect more of them and get more referrals. We spend a little less time on landlord, especially so far because both were pretty suboptimal. Probably your experience from several years ago, both were pretty sub-optimal. But you got to keep in mind for the landlords, they're typically in our dashboard more like four times a year. 90-day average stay. They get in for lease up, then they get to just like set it to the side. You know, some of them have multiple properties or in more often, but it's less of a time investment for the landlords. And so as long as we can get them that six, eight, $10,000 booking, we feel like we've got kind of the value prop, right? And then so we're going to make the tenant experience great. We're going to make messaging great and then we're going to get more into the landlord experience so it can catch up. You know, we want to provide better data. We want to make it faster. I think in particular on mobile it can be better, but there aren't that many places there where it needs to be like radically different or innovative. It just needs to be fast and modern. Who's your ideal host? your ideal landlord. We talk about having um you know rather than talk about all deal ideal, I'll talk about we have three personas we serve and like the avatar, the one we talk about most. We talk about having Betty's and Brian's. You know, a Betty is someone who's probably a um more like an empty neester or retiree. She might be renting out an ADU or she might be renting out a room in her house or she may have acquired an investment property that was a long-term rental for a long time and is converting it in a midterm because she needs more money for retirement or wherever she is. She's not a techsavvy user and she actually prefers that when she uses a Furnished Finder, the phone often rings instead of she logs into an app and starts managing different tech stacks. And so that's that's use case one and we've got we've got a lot of that demographic. Use case two is what we call a Brian named after our founder. They kind of fell into the property. They got married. They each had a house and are like, "Do we sell it or do we rent it? What do we do?" You know, it's different than short-term because it's not like one of them happened to have a house they were living in in Cape Cod. Like, they both had houses near each other in the suburbs of Austin and they're like, "Do we sell or do we rent?" But it's already furnished. So, they decide to put it on as a midterm rental. And like, so they're both first-time landlords. That's probably like 80% of our customers are first-time landlords. And then 20% is what we call a Katie who's been on your show before. and she's an entrepreneur and a business owner and she's trying to grow a portfolio of short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, and is figuring out how these things work together. And typically that Katie profile has usually pretty consciously decided to either not be in short-term or to be getting inward to midterm because they don't want to spend as much time on it to make the cash flow. And so they're trying to do fewer turns every year or they may not have the capital to buy a place on 3A or the Gulf Coast or the mountains, but they've got the capital to buy a duplex, you know, on the outskirts of Austin or in Iowa where it's a totally different ballgame for for for return profiles. So those are the three we serve and we serve them kind of in that order. The first two have a lot in common. And the third one's where we really get more into your question, Mike, on landlord tools. Like we need to do better there. You know, we need to integrate with Hostfully and Guestie and the long-term PMS's and make it easier, but we've got to get it right for the first two profiles first because those are the ones that are really the majority of our inventory. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I'm definitely a Katie. Uh almost that exact scenario. Bought a a Forplex and and uh I was like, man, I can make more just doing 30-day, 90day stays than I can turning over this property six times. I mean, it's it's I mean, and less work. So, um, that's the number one question that I get from our Airbnb and short-term rental hosts is, "How much do I rent my midterm rental for? How much do I list it for? How do I figure that out? Obviously, we have AirDNA. We've got all these different tools on the short-term side. What are you guys working on or recommend for the midterm rental pricing side for a host?" Yeah, we're actually um I'm actually doing a webinar with Richie from Price Labs next week to talk about this. So, um, encourage everybody to check it out when we post it. And we're, um, concurrent with that, publishing a worksheet that helps people think about this because it is, you know, and honestly, it all feels like alchemy right now. You know, everybody's got their own unique formula for how they think about it. And it's kind of crazy, you know, where I start with just like the logic flow of it. You know, start with if you're advertising on Furnished Finder, 100% of your tenants are shopping on Furnished Finder. So, go use the search results and pick a few similar houses and see what they're charging. And that's just like step one. You're mystery shopping our site. The next biggest overlap with Furnished Finders is Airbnb. And so go shop Airbnb and pick four different houses. And then realize that that Airbnb price has 10 to 15% of extra fees in it that you get to decide if you're going to keep as a landlord or pass some of it to the, you know, tenant, but we usually recommend that you price cheaper than Airbnb because most of our customers are coming to us for that reason. And so you go build a mystery shopping list of Furnished Finder, you know, optional mystery shopping list of Airbnb. And then what I say is the sanity check is you've got two sanity checks. One is go look at Zillow and you should be able to charge about 50% more than an unfernished long-term rental. I'd say anywhere between 50 and 100% more. Or go look at your like local extended stay America. You know, they're typically going to charge $80 to $100 a night. depending on where you are can about fluctuate quite a bit. And just think to yourself, can I price this to where someone who looked at extended stay America thinks they're crazy to stay there. You know, $2,400 for a 480T extended stay America with a kitchenet or $2,200 for a one-bedroom, one bath, like fully furnished apartment that's, you know, 1100 ft². You can kind of think about that as like the calibration points. And then we're building a worksheet to help people put it together. The other thing I encourage people to have been surprised, you know, and short, not surprised, short-term rentals have happened a lot too. A lot of people have no idea what this thing costs in the first place. And so the first thing is actually like know your expenses. What's your mortgage? What are your utilities? You know, you do need to have more of a fund for like maintenance and vacancies and like think about those things and like know what your floor price is to just break even. And if you don't have to break even, fine. But really know that math, too. I know Mike is happy that you said that. I can just see it. like I've known him enough. He just has that little smile just building in his upper cheeks. Just and I I know this is not going to hurt your feelings, but I hope it doesn't hurt the feelings of anybody else in furnish fun. In my mind, anytime I thought about you guys has always been for my more economy stay kind of properties, right? Is my onebedroom, my two bedrooms, maybe my three, but not really my four, five, six, seven bedroom houses. Is that still true? Is that something that will remain through for Furnished Finder or is in your mind and plan with the team? Is that something that is going to change? Uh, it is changing and will continue changing, but it doesn't have an end game that feels like Airbnb or VRBO. And I think that's really important. So, let me talk you through it a little bit. 300,000 homes in the US, uh, 70% of them are two-bedroom or smaller. And that includes that, you know, we have 60,000 room rentals. And so it's just just flat out it's a smaller footprint. The use case typically you're um a traveling academic, you're traveling like construction work or for a corporate job or you're um a relocating family or of course what we're famous for is traveling nurses. So most of those budgets per month are around $2,000. You know, 1,500 to 3,000 is certainly the sweet spot. So, you know, most short-term rentals would have a much higher monthly price than that. you know, that's more like a weekly price for most short-term rentals. So, in some sense, it's downbudget. Um, certainly at like an ADR level. In another sense, a lot of these are actually the same consumers. And so, you know, same household income, same budget constraints. They choose to spend more on the most important week of their life with their family. And they need to actually save more on their three-month construction assignment to go build a data center in Monroe, Louisiana. And they can save money from their stipend, and the nurse can save money from their stipend. And so you're serving somebody similar. The fit out is not nearly, you know, it's not ping pong tables and pickle ball and 17 60inch TVs. You don't need that stuff to go do your job. And you don't need that stuff if you're a traveling professor. Now, where it starts to get a little bit more upscale is the fastest growing category we have in the entire company of tenants is relocations. And you know, three years ago, people would have thought about that as like insurance housing. Now, what it literally is is a family, you know, Mike Mike moved from San Francisco to North Carolina. It's a family who's moving from Seattle to Austin. They either can't afford or are not willing to pay for the house yet because they want to try before they buy. And so, they're going to come rent a three-bedroom house in a, you know, suburb of Austin for 6 months, try out the school system, try out the neighborhood, and they're willing to pay more. They're going to live there, and they get to save money on furniture. And so you're seeing more of that dynamic where I think our inventory will start to expand around call it primary schools and high schools into nicer neighborhoods where people are basically making a decision to try before they buy or potentially with the younger demographic. We actually see a lot of people who I think are really rationally making a decision not to own furniture. So you know furniture is expensive, moving furniture is expensive. And if you're not committed to a location or a job and you can rent the furniture with the house, you really buy a hell of a lot of option value in terms of how you live your life and what you do next. And so we see a younger demographic. You know, some people would call them digital nomads, but I think it's a little different. They literally just want to rent it all because they want to have the flexibility to live their life in a very different way than generation X drew up. And so it is it's getting more premium, but I don't have any suspicion that this is a category that grows to like sixbedroom, seven bath houses that have $200,000 interior furnishing. I hope it doesn't. You know, I think what we're trying to solve is a real community service. Somebody's roof catches on fire, somebody wants to move to a neighborhood and can't afford to buy or can't sell their last place, like you want this inventory there. And a lot of where I think that next wave of growth comes from, it's the um what used to be like an estate sale tearown may now be an interesting way for someone who inherits that home to furnish it and have it be a very lucrative midterm rental, you know, whether it's for sentimental value or because the market's not right to sell. Yeah, I love that. And I love the integrity aspect of it that really kind of was oozing out in the way that you answered that question, right? in the way that you guys are not going after the Airbnbs and you're not planning on it. I appreciate it, right? In terms of like Well, yeah. At a personal level, like it's not lost on me that Airbnb kicked my ass for about 12 years of my career. Like I mean, like that happens. You know, we built a very successful business that I'm really proud of at VRBO, but you know, they did something different and unique and like I don't want to relive that either, but I think they're doing a disservice to a lot of a lot of the market that deserves something cheaper and better. Yeah, I love that you brought that up because I was gonna ask you. Sorry, Riley. No, go ahead. We're so you had a look behind the curtain when it cames to VBO. That's how I used to call and everybody started saying verbal and people are like I'm like maybe I'm just Italian. I switched back and forth. You can go either way. Okay, good. I'm going to tell people that you told me to do so. So now I have, you know, a little passing and Expedia. And so what would you share with our listener with host in general from the look behind the curtain that would help us be better host and or just attract more traffic? I think the um you know when you when you think about being a better host I think the most important thing to anchor on is that you are in charge of your own business and and and there there is a difference between a between being a business owner and a host. arguably the world's greatest host would be a pretty terrible business owner. Like they would invest in things that don't make sense and they would lose money on those things and they would make decisions that make a guest feel great but may not make any economic sense. And so I mean I think the first piece of advice I give people is like first and foremost people are trying to be business owners and approach it that way. And business owners think about thing like channel diversification. And they think about things like, you know, when to cancel and not cancel when something unfortunate happens with a guest of like why there is trip insurance and why there are like you think about those in a business way different than you think about them as a host. And so my first piece of advice is to separate those two things. My second piece of advice is to know which channels do what for you and in particular to price them accordingly and potentially content them accordingly. You know, you should have repeat guests coming directly to you. They shouldn't need to go through a portal. You should have a different pricing strategy on Airbnb and VRBO because Airbnb is more restrictive than VRBO. You know, both of them should probably be a little more expensive than whatever you do on your own channel, not just for their fees, but like there are pricing games in there that that really matter. And then, you know, the and I think maybe somewhat of I'm saying is like, oh, you get that on most podcasts from someone who hadn't been the president of VRBO. I think the last thing I'd say is that while um these companies at VRBO, we tried very hard to be in touch with an individual host of what they were trying to solve, but we had two million of them. And so you solve things at a macro scale. You solve for the system. And so policies and changes are meant to make the system stronger. And it's really incumbent on the owner, business owner, and the host to know whether it makes their business stronger. Because very often in a marketplace there are winners and losers from these policies. And while the whole pie may grow, somebody's just got eaten. And you've got to really be aware where you are in that dynamic because it's your responsibility. It's their responsibility to educate you about what's happening. It's your responsibility to adapt your business to be sure you're making the most out of what is happening. Yeah, that's a great that's a great question, E. And I was as a follow-up question to that, you know, as hosts, we've seen went through COVID with, you know, Airbnb cancing stays left and right. The rates have gone up on Airbnb as well. Airbnb is getting into services, that sort of thing. And VRBO, I don't know. I feel like the majority of short-term rental hosts are saying, "All right, VRBO's for the big houses." You know, everybody's, you know, on Airbnb and Airbnb's got a bigger market share. But just from your experience and you're you've been in this industry for a long time, like what do you see the future of short-term rentals becoming? Is it is it we're going to get way more supply of homes and or maybe less supply of homes and regulations come in more? Like what do you see from your your Yeah. Um I think that the fastest growth in the US is behind us in in terms of supply if for no other reason. Like these regulations aren't going away. They're not. And so especially the urban ones, you know, and and really a lot of them, there are places where the regulations are probably good and there are more places where I think they're, you know, political gamesmanship. But from a regulatory perspective, it's going to get harder. There's going to be less of this and so, you know, I think the supply growth will slow down. I think the second thing to consider on it is that because there's more competition, you know, the returns on these aren't as good as they used to be and so you've got fewer people chasing them. And I think that's a big part of the reason we see people coming into midterm rentals is that if you want to be in the real estate game, here's an opportunity to kind of have a little bit of the best of both worlds. And so people are going to pursue that a little bit more. Um the other thing I'd add which I think is interesting is that um it'll be it'll be curious to see how much of it's a co hangover versus a real trend. I think hotels have gotten better. I think they realized what changed during COVID and what people's habits were and most for sure on the high end like the luxury game is more competitive because hotels have really upped their games. They're building better resorts. They're building house offers. It's um I think the luxury sector is going to get a lot more competitive. And so, you know, if I were a betting person, like where is there money to be made in short-term rentals? You know, I think that still like the biggest adage probably still holds a bigger format house with a scarce geographic asset. Waterfront, riverfront, ski in, ski out, like it's going to be hard to really lose on those because there won't be more water in the US. There won't be more opening resorts in the US. Like, you're going to have a scarce asset. And so, if if you're not playing for cash flow, I think that part will still pretty much work. And hotels are always going to have a hard time accommodating three families that want to share a living room together. like it's just it just can't work that well. But other than that, I think a lot of where people made money, you know, call it in the boom years, in particular, urban environments, Bachelor, Bachelorette, like I think that's going to be a tough game to play in the future because you're competing on amenities, you're competing on reviews, and that arms race is getting to be really expensive compared to I found a great deal. I've got three short-term rentals. Each of them is something that I think was a great deal with a scarce geographic asset like a beach, you know, beachfront, lakefront, or like a unique ranch on the river. You just can't replicate those as much. But if you're, you know, found a screaming deal and think you can do a burr on a, you know, five bed, four bath and interior Austin, like there's a lot of people who are competing with you who are arguably going to be better at it. Just a little followup to that, you mentioned the luxury and you mentioned hotels, too. you know, Marriott's tried to get into this game for for a little while. Do you see any of those bigger players getting into short-term rentals as well or even midterm rentals, too? That's a good question. I think both. You know, the hotels that I think I think Marriott's strategy was was well done. You know, they've got thousands of homes that they curated. They basically just earn a marketing fee on them and they're mainly for bonvoy points to be redeemed in places where you don't have myriads. Like, good job. I think that is a super sensible strategy. Um, you know, when you get into like who's done a who's done something really interesting with like an offer, like I think One and Only, I think Rosewood, like I think the luxury brands that are selling individual homes at the resorts where you get a full-on private home experience and everything else that's really hard to compete with if you just have a nice luxury home. Now, sure, it's more expensive, but once you start to play in that super luxury space, like there's a lot less price sensitivity. You know, people are not walking away because there's a 10% fee. They want that house. They don't care. They're going to go take it. Um, and so I I think that, you know, I don't think like three star is going to be a battleground. I think five star is going to be a battleground. In MTRS, I can I can certainly see it. You know, there's almost like the and there's a few of them. There's Hello Landing and Blue Ground are kind of like the Saunders of midterm rentals. different operating model, but they're taking out long-term leases and they're furnishing and they run kind of like a more affordable version of corporate housing. And I think that's I think, you know, they're customers of ours and I think that's a that's a smart play, but I don't think there's a there has not yet proven in short term and I don't think there will be in midterm a viable single family rollup play for hotels to be there. It doesn't really match their DNA. how they how they approach cleaning, how they approach operations, how they approach entering and exiting capital. Like, it's just a lot different versus owning, you know, 20, 50, 100 individual homes. I think there's a niche that's going to be pretty durable. And what I like about the midterm space for those investors, say you're going to put half a million dollars to work for a short-term rental, you know, you might be getting a quadplex for a mid-term rental instead of a single family home for a short-term rental. You just have different opportunities for how you can utilize the space. And your backup plan is always make it a long-term rental and like have a lower return but pay all the bills and be fine versus like a short-term rental that goes wrong, you know, goes throw the mortgage in the trash wrong. There's no climbing out of it if it goes really wrong. I totally forgot what my last question was, but it's okay. Must have not been that good. So, my new question that I have for you is this, right? as an industry leader and through all the people that you've got to meet in your life as you run Furnish Founders, as you come into this new company, what are some of the philosophy and people that have inspired you in the way that you lead and you run teams? Three, I'd say the uh there would be a very long list. I'll mention a handful. All people I worked directly with the co-founders of home way hugely influential in my life. Brian Sharples and Carl Shepard and and very different leaders. Brian much more charismatic, Brian much more salesman and like I try and figure out how do I how do I bring that part of him into my role to like keep people excited and motivated and think about a future. Carl very empathetic leader very connected to you know what's going on with owners, what's going on in communities, what's the impact of what we're doing. So I try and bring some of that also. I first worked for a very long time with Brent Bellum who was the COO at Homeaway and became the CEO of payments company Big Commerce. He's probably one of the best operators I've ever seen. Like the discipline he brought to the role was really phenomenal. And um you know I'm John Cam at Farbo can be that way too. There's a discipline aspect of CEO that's really um it's not always my strong suit. Um, and so I try and remember what it felt like to be on their teams when they were creating rhythm and pace and goal setting in a way that I'm a little bit more lzar and trusting sometimes on that front. And then the last person, you know, when we sold Homeaway at the time to Expedia, Dar was the from Uber was the CEO of Expedia. And what I'll never forget about him was how available he was to a company of more than 20,000 people. like just see him around the like just there wasn't for who he was and who he's become there was never an aura of I can't approach him or talk to him in a way that I always found really meaningful of like you kind of knew that he was somewhere under there just a regular guy and you could talk to him and approach him and talk about things in a different manner and so you know obviously we're small but that part of like having lunch together with the team and talking about what's going on with my son at summer camp or you know how how hard AB or C is as a you know as a father, as a husband, as a friend, like bringing that into life, I think is connected. And I mean, honestly, often as a short-term rental owner, it's like I was telling Mike, you know, doc washed away, beach ruined last weekend. And it's like, but in the context of what happened in Texas, like I'm a winner. Like that could have been worse. And people are dealing with harder stuff. And like I signed up for this as a business owner and like remember that and go solve the business problem. Like don't cry about it. People have real things to cry about right now. And let's think about how we help them because they need monthly housing. they need a place to live because their house washed away or they lost a loved one and that part's you know so there there's something from each of those people and you know there's a very long list beyond it but those are the ones that jump out. I love that. As you continue to grow as as a CEO but from the sound of it also as a father also as a husband how much time do you spend on your craft as a CEO and how much time do you spend on other interests that you have? Yeah. Um, you know, there's uh I'd say there's like it's kind of like there's there's space for these three things in your life. You know, there's the uh not not counting sleep and I'm a great sleeper. That's something I really invest in. But um you know, the the stuff that's my the stuff that's my family is the stuff that I've way more now than in my 20s and 30s is a movable. Like I'm home for dinner. I'm home for breakfast. I take Grant to all his basketball stuff. I travel with the team. Like it's immovable because it used to be too easy for me to move it. Now, it fluctuates because it fluctuates based on their needs more than my desires, but I'm there. The CEO aspect is something where it's um it's probably the most funable. There's obligations. There's things I have to do and I go and do them. It's it's one where very I don't read management books. I don't listen to management podcasts like I used to, but it it's very much behind me. If I've got spare time and I'm thinking about CEO as a craft, I'm playing with our product. I'm reading what influencers saying on social or picking up a podcast or thinking about like I'm trying to be in the shoes of, you know, a tenant or a landlord or I'm trying to be in the shoes of like what's happening in the industry. I'm not reading a book on like how to be more effective or how to communicate differently or how to give feedback. Like I'm a little bit maybe to my detriment. like I kind of am who I am now and people who work with me know me and know who I am and they signed up for that and so like I'm growing but it's a little different. And then the third piece of the pie chart is like what are my hobbies and what I do with friends. I'm like I'm at a stage in life where that got narrower. It's seasons. You know two years ago I didn't have a job. There was a lot of that. I did a ton of surfing, got in great shape, but now that's a little smaller. And I think of it as like I'm deinvesting there for a period of my life because if this goes well, I'll be able to invest a lot more there. And you know, 5 years from now, I want to have kids in the house. Like some of that time is going to free up, too. And so I view it as a season where I do need to invest, you know, the always on family more in my career and maybe a little bit less in friendships than I'd like to. You know, my hobbies are like I like boating. I like outdoor. I like fishing. I've got this ranch that I, you know, I tell people what I learned when I was unemployed after Expedia was that if I had more money, I wouldn't do anything because I really enjoyed like going to the ranch and chainsawing trees and working on stuff and just having little knickknack projects, but I'm very energized by what we're doing now. And so it's fun and so it takes up a little more space. Yeah, I love that answer. What made you choose Furnished Finder? like with after being off and like I'm sure you could have had other opportunities or kind of pinpoint to like a different industry altogether or different parts of travel. What does a man like you look at when it's like is it the people? Is it the product? Is it a combination of the two things? Is it the culture? Like you know it's it's a um I had a bunch of different CEO offers. I ended up here for a handful of reasons and and I wouldn't say there's a trying to think about how to give advice on it, but the the reasons I ended up here, one was there wasn't really much of a team in the US and so I got to build one, which meant I got to work with people I know and wanted to work with again, which honestly drisked a lot, but also made it more fun. Linked to that, there wasn't an office and so I put the office I can drive to my office without going through a stoplight. So that and you know, back to the pie chart, like that means I can spend more time with my family and so like that became a big selling point. I wasn't going to be traveling. You know, I was looking at stuff. Oh, you're going to be a remote CEO in San Francisco, but we've got an office in New York and we opened one in London. I was like, oh crap, I've done that before. That's hard. Like, it's lucrative, but it's hard. And so, there was there was a lifestyle component on the people I would be with and what it meant for my family. There was a second piece of, you know, I mentioned kind of the ass whipping I took along the way. There was a second piece of like, I know how to do this. Like, I know this space. I know this marketplace model. This is adjacent enough to where I can apply things. And that got me to a place of I think I'll be more successful as a first-time CEO doing this because I really do know the space and I think that I hope that has held true. I think we're doing good smart things and moving faster. And then the uh you know the third piece to it. I mean like as I mentioned like um if this goes well I'll make a decent amount of money and that'll be great. you know, like you kind of you learn along the way what you're worth and how to value time and money and like that part of this wasn't the most lucrative thing I could have done, but it was certainly enough to where the other two really made it very compelling from that sense. You know, I always tell people when they're approaching a similar discussion and I do a lot of this at University of Texas each year is like you get to choose what you're going to do, where you're going to do it, and what city you're going to live in. And the order of those things, knowing those things yourself matters the most. like going and and I was a Mackenzie consultant so like there was a lot of like well I'm going to go apply to Mackenzie Cleveland because it's easier to get into than Mackenzie San Francisco or this that or the other and it's like remember you're committing to Cleveland and that might be great but like I want to be in Austin in my community near my family and so that was a guiding light and so location is it then the next thing is like is it the company or is it the role you're going to play and for me I wanted to be a CEO so it was the role and then all right what's the best company I can find to go do that at but I Think everyone can have a very different stage of life and it shifts of like are you willing to be flexible on location to get a new title. Are you willing to be flexible on you know what title you have to work at a company you may not think has as much growth opportunity and you got to think about all those three things together. This is a good growth. I feel like I nailed all three but those are the dimensions I was evaluating on. Yeah. If your son asks you after college, "Dad, should I be my own boss and start my own company or work really hard and become a CEO of another company?" What's what's what's dad's advice? Dad's first advice is you have no idea what you're going to want 20 years from now. So, focus on the next three years. So, I'll give him the same advice I give juniors at University of Texas. The first three years about your career is three things. You are building knowledge. You are building a network. And those two things are helping you build options. And if you're doing those three things, you're going to be fine. It doesn't have to be about wealth creation. It does like it's about those three things. And so if you can get a job on the path to a CEO that's building knowledge and a great network, like that's McKenzie like or you know a lot of different companies, but for me it was Mackenzie. I built a great network. I learned a lot and it positioned me well to do something different. But just as easily, if he, you know, if you want to start a property management business or buy a property management business, you're going to learn all those things fast and you might have great option value and great on the ground knowledge, but maybe a very different network. So, I think some of it is like how passionate are you about knowing what you want to do. When I was 19, all I knew was I was passionate about making money because I wanted more money than I had growing up. That was the extent of it. How do I go make the most money possible? Grant will probably be in a different spot. Emerson, too. I like I hope they were a little more thoughtful around like I'm going to enjoy doing this when I go to work and have a choice to do that. I enjoyed my work, but it was more by chance and there were times I totally hated it. But, you know, I I think that's the dynamic. If you find something you're passionate about and you do it long enough, you'll find a way to make money doing it. It's just you're going to go through some leaner years on the way. Yeah, I love it. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. I really enjoy conversating with you, so I find myself just wanting to keep asking you questions, but you are a CEO, so I want to be respectful of your time. For people that uh may have written off Furnished Finder in the past, what is the best way to get back in touch with you guys? What are some of the ways that you would like us to support you guys? Yeah, I mean, I think um you know, one, if if anyone listening is interested in uh you know, giving us a try, important to know like you know, it's building a listing like any other site. It's $179 a year and then we stay out of your ship. You know, we're not a booking platform. We're not telling you how to run your business. The phone's going to ring or you're going to get emails and if it doesn't, your price was probably too high or the property wouldn't have hit and we're sorry we took $179. But most people, the property works, you know, the platform works really well and you know, it's just a low risk. If you don't have $179 someone in the rental game, you shouldn't be in the rental game. Like you need to have more available capital than that to try things and figure out what you're doing next. And so I'd encourage people to try it. We have a uh offer code out there, new 10, which is 10% off if it helps people, anybody get over the hood. And then if you're if you're someone who maybe, you know, is in more of your coaching group and you've got 15 short-term rentals or 20 and the flexibility to live other places, my encouragement is to try it as a tenant. You know, if you want to go spend your summer on the East Coast because you're in the South and you want to be someplace with better weather, you want to move around, you know, check out the 300,000 homes and just try it as a tenant and see what you think. And um you know we think we've got a good value proposition and are excited about what we're building. The misconception is that it's a platform for traveling nurses. That's what everybody thinks of because we got really big in co about little over 20% of our tenants are traveling nurses. 75% aren't. And so you know there's a wide net of people out there. If you're close to a university, a hospital, good public schools or major construction, you're close to someone who needs monthly furnished housing. You've just got to figure out who it is and what the use case should be. Love it. Jeff, this is the question that we ask all of our all of our guests and I'm excited to hear your answers for it. What is your number one secret to success with short-term rentals? With short-term rentals, short-term revenue service, give us a there is no substitute for finding a place that's below market price, you know, and so I've bought three places. Each of the places I bought, I would consider to be a somewhat distressed sale of someone who I knew needed to get out of the space. And if you can be picky about what you're looking for and then find the ingredient of someone who needs to sell, you know, buying something at the right price or even below the right price will absolve a lot of sins and learning mistakes after the fact. And so, you know, don't think of it as like I've just got to get at bats and be fast and start practicing. I got to buy something, figure it out. If you buy the wrong something, you'll never figure it out. So, don't do that. Yeah, I could we couldn't say it better. Riley, any last minute thoughts? No, Jeff, uh, so New10, that's the discount, $18 off the for the year, but I love what you said about, uh, having us hosts try it out as tenants. I think most of us hosts do not want to give Airbnb any more of our money. So, no, it's good to meet you. One one thing um you know for people in that boat who do decide to use this, you know, be sure you use at least one of the same images or the same headline as what you might have on Airbnb because there are a ton of tenants who are reverse engineering Airbnb. You know, maybe you're big enough to have your own website, but if not, that's how they end up coming to Furnished Finder is they're trying to save the 12%. And so if you've got a price that saves the 12%, then there's a pretty good chance they might see you in one and then book with you through us by ringing your phone number. That's great. You're going to get paid in cat. You know, you're going to get paid directly with a check or a something that saves you money and they're going to save the fees and you're going to have a real contract and you're not going to have to deal with somebody calling you and saying that your booking's been cancelled for reasons you don't understand. I love it. Jeff, this was uh this was a pleasure. We really do appreciate you uh coming on the show and spending time with us and I think you shared I know at least for me you shared a wealth of information that it's really evident of the amount of work and and love and passion that you put in what you do. So we appreciate it and thank you for u what you're going to do for Furnished Finder. I'm excited for you guys to um yeah come to the marketplace in such a in such a big way. All right. Well, thank you for having me guys and uh all the best everybody listening. Hazard.