I thought I'd share a recent experiment we've conducted with short-term furnished rentals. It was a bit of a gamble; we spent around $20K on furnishings, which we knew we wouldn't get back if we ended up converting the apartments back to standard rentals.

We partnered with someone in a small town in the middleunowhere. There's not a lot of industry, but there are two businesses constantly bringing in temporary workers for anywhere from two weeks to six months. Hotels there run $80+ a night. AirBnb options are cheaper, about $40/night, but are limited to renting a room in someone's house.

We purchased a four-unit of 2BR apartments, and offered them for rent either as individual rooms or entire apartments.

The going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in this town is about $600/month. We're getting $2400/month for our furnished apartments. There's literally nobody else doing this. It took about three weeks from the time we opened our doors to get filled, and we're now turning people away. We're still refining our processes, but it's been a great niche so far.

So if you're looking to diversify your rentals, you might look for short-term needs around you.

Impressive and congratulations!

RB, $20K sounds like a lot, but that's $5K per unit for everything from appliances to queen-sized beds/sheets/bedding to living room furniture. We didn't buy new (except for the mattresses), but we did buy nice. We're charging a premium price, so we're attracting people who are willing to pay more to stay at a nice place.

Years ago I took my smallest unit in an apartment property, a single apartment, on the beach and converted it to a short term rental. Normally I'd only give a tenant a 1 or 2 years leave, nothing less.

Everyone who never lived near to an ocean wanted to try the experience living on or near the beach. You've hear of Venice California.

So at the start of Summer I'd get dozens of people wanting to rent short term. I would only give short term lease that would end at a period of the year the apartment could easily be re-rented. Cold beach weather scares most off.

This is impressive!! Within couple months, you will have your investment back and the rest is pure gold...

I am curious how you set the price to 4 times of the typical rent w/o nice furnishings. I imagine it is a price competitive with extended stay buy nicer environment.

In my area, few landlord funishes apt and rent to students, the rent is only 50% higher than non-furnished.

Two bedroom unfurnished apts go for $600 and you are getting $2,400 for similar size furnished apts?

Robin, Thanks for sharing.

We have some multifamily buildings. I wanted to make one unit for furnished short term rental because I want to make the walkout basement for our storage. This post is very good information.

We set our prices by looking at the going rate for AirBnbs in the area, which is about $40/night. Most of those are for a spare bedroom in someone's home with a shared bathroom. So they're basically just getting a place to sleep and shower.

We're charging between $43-$48/night, and they get a full kitchen and bathroom to share with just one other guest.