Furnished Finder

Alex Reeves: Thanks everybody for joining us on this episode of Invest Smart with Steadily. Today we've got our guest from Furnished Finder, Katie Lyons, on and we're going to discuss a little bit about midterm rentals and insurance and how they relate to each other. So Katie, I appreciate you joining us on today's episode. I'd like to start with a quick introduction, some background on your end, and then if you might as well just dive in a little bit whenever you're comfortable as far as explaining Furnished Finder's value proposition and kind of where you guys fit in the midterm rental space.

Katie Lyons: Sure. So my name is Katie Lyons, I'm the marketing director for Furnished Finder. I'm also the podcast co-host, and I get to do a lot of the outreach and education for the platform and just for midterm rentals in general. I'm lucky because — at the end of this month it'll be, I think, 14 midterm rentals of our own that I invest in with my family, so we have a little family business on the side. So I get to not only help with Furnished Finder but also give people a first-person point of view on what it's like to be a landlord, how to use Furnished Finder, the best ways, and just overall tips and tricks.

Furnished Finder is the go-to platform for if you're looking for a midterm rental or if you're looking to list a midterm rental. It's 30 days and up — nothing under 30 days, everything is furnished, obviously with our name Furnished Finder. But it's really a fantastic place to find your next tenant, or if you're a traveler, to find your next home. That's our ultimate goal.

Alex: Awesome. I'd love to learn a little bit of the background story as far as how Furnished Finder started. I'm sure there might be a little bit of a personal story behind the idea.

Katie: It's definitely a small business start. Our original founders began with some rentals themselves and then discovered, "Wouldn't it be great if people had a better way to find these rentals, or a better place to list them?" Because they're not short-term rentals and they're not long-term rentals — they're different. When you're using those other sites to list your rental for maybe four or six months, it just doesn't quite fit. So they came up with a platform, tried out a few different models, and then it really hit the ground running during COVID when travel nursing took off. One city needed a lot of medical staff for a while and then it would switch to another city, so the demand for traveling medical professionals was huge.

At the beginning we were only medical-professional focused, and now that's still a large part of our tenant base but it's not the biggest anymore. We have a lot of corporate travelers, a lot of business travelers, relocating families — it's just evolved and grown and gone through all these different chapters. It's really cool to have been a part of it during that growth and to see where we are now.

Alex: That's really cool. So you mentioned how Furnished Finder might fit better for somebody trying to rent out their place for longer than 30 days. How specifically do you differentiate yourselves from, say, Airbnb or VRBO?

Katie: There are a few things everybody needs to know when moving from an Airbnb or a VRBO onto Furnished Finder. First of all, we are only midterm rentals — we're not here for a vacation, we're not here for a bachelorette party. My favorite use case to talk about is when my husband and I were finishing building the house we're in right now. We thought we'd planned for plenty of extra time with construction, because we all know how construction goes, and we did not. We ended up with about a six-week gap, and at the time we had two young kids, a dog, a cat, and a hedgehog. There was no way we were going to move into an apartment for six weeks. We ended up living with my in-laws, but it was a hard six weeks — a challenging mixture of lifestyles, pets, and kids. Furnished Finder would have been perfect for us. We could have rented a single-family home close to the school for exactly those six weeks — we weren't looking for a year-long house and we weren't looking for a vacation. That's that middle need we serve.

The other thing that's different is how we run our platform. We strongly believe in not being the middleman with transactions. Our business model is that to list your property you pay one flat subscription price, and then travelers don't pay any booking fees or commissions, and neither does the landlord. It's much more affordable for all parties, and it means the properties listed on the site are ones where landlords are really serious about finding a tenant and are high quality.

Alex: Awesome. You just mentioned some uniqueness in how you operate with landlords and tenants — could you go into a few of the features that you operate differently?

Katie: A lot of it is based on the freedom that we give. We really want potential tenants and landlords to communicate — we encourage them. We're not here to block any chats or stop you from sending your phone numbers or email addresses. We want landlords to have the chance to do tenant screenings, and we want landlords to be able to incorporate things to protect their properties. We just try to provide a lot of freedom within those relationships, because midterm rentals are about relationships. If you're going to an Airbnb for a week, you don't need to have a relationship with that property owner. If you're going to stay somewhere for six months, you do. We try to make sure the functionality of the site and the whole process is mindful of the fact that those relationships really matter.

Alex: It sounds like tenants have easy access if something needs to be fixed, and on top of that, since everything is move-in ready and furnished, there's more responsiveness than you might typically see through the long-term rental process. Am I on par with that?

Katie: Yeah. All the properties are move-in ready — it has to be furnished to be on our site. If it's not furnished, you have to be in the process of furnishing it and not renting it until it's done. That's a firm requirement, because these types of travelers are looking for places where they can move in and call it home. Whether it's a displaced family, an intern, a grad student, or someone visiting their grandkids for the summer — they're looking to come in and move in. That is a huge aspect of what we do.

Alex: So Katie, you mentioned that COVID helped Furnished Finder grow faster than the industry was moving before, and that you were initially geared toward travel nurses. Could you key in a little on the increasing popularity — that it's more than just travel nurses utilizing places like Furnished Finder now?

Katie: COVID did so much for our world and especially for Furnished Finder. The demand increased really dramatically because we had all that need for medical professionals in different areas — it would just shift so rapidly, an outburst here and an outburst there. But other things changed as well. Midterm rentals have always been around — we haven't always been calling them that. Sometimes we've been saying corporate housing, or relocation housing, or travel nurse housing. The term "midterm rentals" is kind of a new catchphrase but it's not a new thing. It's just grown a lot.

When you think about what else COVID did — you and I are both sitting in our home offices right now. Working from home went from being a luxury that only certain people had to something almost everyone I talk to is doing, either full-time or hybrid. So if I wanted to go stay near my family in the Midwest for the summer, I have no obstacles. I can pack up my family, rent a property on Furnished Finder, and stay there for two months. I feel like everybody is less permanent in the place they call home. And I think our mindset has also shifted — we all know what it felt like to be shut down, so now it's like, let's go explore a little bit.

Business travel is also very much back. If a company is going to open a new Chick-fil-A franchise, for example, they're probably going to send someone to oversee the project for the most critical two months, or send a key trainer. Business travel has changed but it's back, and a lot of people are traveling for work for multiple months at a time. This stuff is happening all around us — we just don't always notice it because it's day-to-day.

Alex: So Katie, I've got a little bit of a personal story here. My girlfriend actually used Furnished Finder last fall when she did a travel nursing stint. She traveled from Kansas City down to Dallas and used Furnished Finder to move into a move-in-ready space. I was asking her about the experience before the podcast, and she was going on and on about how it's essentially a must-have for travel nursing — you can move to another city, pack your day-to-day necessities and your clothes, go to work, and not have to worry about anything else. It's almost like peace of mind, like an extended hotel but a lot more personal.

Katie: That's perfect for them. When you're doing these projects — whether you're a travel nurse or you're displaced from your house because of a flood or a fire — you want to come somewhere and have it feel like home. That's the whole goal.

Alex: And on top of that, one market I hadn't even thought about is patients who have long-term care needs at hospitals. My girlfriend actually educated me on that — hospitals are referring patients who need extended care and have to stay within a certain mile threshold of a hospital. It's not something we like to think about, but being able to make a loved one more comfortable when they're away from home — that's a huge thing.

Katie: It is, because your property is doing something good. I've had tenants who traveled to be close to their surrogate who was giving birth. I have a tenant right now who's recovering from a kidney transplant and has to be close to the hospital for all of his appointments. I've had a daughter who came to be close to her mom while she was on hospice. There are a lot of different cases, but in every case — yes, it's an investment as a property owner — but you are providing housing that someone really, really needs. Whether they're providing care, receiving care, on a work project, or displaced from their home, these are people who need this type of housing. It makes it feel better knowing you're adding to the good in the world.

Alex: All those scenarios you just mentioned are really stressful times in people's lives, and if anything, it's adding peace of mind that the place they're staying isn't going to be an issue — it's going to be easy. So kind of on that note, what are some of the other benefits for landlords working with Furnished Finder, in addition to the obvious ones like longer occupancies and reduced turnovers?

Katie: There are tons. Firsthand, they are so easy to manage. You help someone get moved in, get them the Wi-Fi codes and door locks and all that, and then they're there to settle in. You're not pestered because someone's missing a beach towel, you're not getting people in and out all the time. These tenants also really care about the property and take very good care of it. You're not having damage from constant move-outs, and they are a lot more gentle on your furnishings because they're going to be there for a while — they don't want to mistreat things that are in their home, even if it's a temporary home for three to six months or nine months. And it's really great to work with these professional-type tenants. They're very responsible, very responsive, and it just makes your life as a landlord much, much easier.

Alex: For sure. Well, Katie, I wouldn't be doing my part on the Invest Smart podcast if I didn't bring up insurance. What would be a few unique insurance needs for midterm rentals, and could you discuss a little bit of your experience on the claims side with your own Furnished Finder properties?

Katie: It's a question we get a lot — what do I do for insurance on my property? Luckily, with these professional-type tenants the damage is typically a lot less, but you still need to have coverage. The most we've experienced personally is one pan that was damaged — someone cooked something that was I'm sure incredibly delicious, but the pan did not survive. The only other thing I've had is someone spilled red wine on a rug, but as a reflection of these tenant types, the first thing she did was text me and tell me. They're very responsible. But you still have to be covered, for sure.

Alex: To highlight on the insurance side — quick background for everyone: at Steadily, we typically consider midterm rentals more similar to a short-term rental insurance policy rather than a long-term rental policy. But basically, an insurance policy is going to cover the dwelling — damage from fires, broken pipes, theft, personal liability, and loss of rent. Probably the biggest one for our landlord policies would be loss of rent. If the property becomes uninhabitable — say a tree falls on a house and for two months it's being repaired — that's where loss of rent comes in to protect against losing that rental income.

Katie: That coverage doesn't get talked about enough. We have a property in Florida, and a good friend of mine has a property about a mile away. They were both hit hard by Hurricane Ian. Luckily ours had damage we needed to file claims for, but she actually had to file for loss of rent, and that was the only thing that kept them afloat. With the amount of time everything was taking before her house was ready for the next tenant, that line item in her insurance is what saved them. You cannot undervalue that.

Alex: Not at all. And it goes back to a key concern in the industry — people aren't reading their coverages as closely as they should. They say people only read their insurance policies twice: when they're shopping and purchasing the policy, and unfortunately the second time is when they're filing a claim. When you're shopping for those policies, make sure loss of rent is going to be sufficient if something does happen. Insurance is just risk mitigation. If you want a lower premium and lower loss-of-rent coverage, that's fine, but that doesn't lower the actual risk — it just means your rent could be gone if something happens. Lots of factors to consider, and it's property by property.

So Katie, could you walk us through how landlords can list their properties on Furnished Finder?

Katie: It's really simple. Just go to furnishedfinder.com, click on "list your property," and follow the prompts. It's a marketplace, so you want to show your best face and put your best foot forward. Take your listing very seriously and try to make it really high quality, because there are so many tenants looking for good homes. If there weren't, I wouldn't have the growing portfolio of rentals that I do — we're fully occupied, so we just keep going. I'm like, I guess we'll stop when we're not occupied, but we're occupied, so the demand is there.

The experience is great, and at Furnished Finder we're working harder and harder to get partners like you guys at Steadily who can help the landlord, property owner, and investor from all angles. It can feel overwhelming when you're getting started — you've got to furnish, you've got to get insurance, you've got to get the right funding — and partners like Steadily come in and really help make this an attainable process for new and existing landlords. It's such a great space and it's going to grow so much. The insurance question is always one of the first things I get: "What about insurance?" And I say, you need it, and it needs to be good. There's just so much possibility here.

Alex: Awesome. Let's pretend for a second I'm a brand new landlord trying to put my property on Furnished Finder. What would be a few tangible tips to make a listing that much more attractive?

Katie: I always tell people to invest in professional photography. It is a 100% must — not optional. Not your iPhone, not my iPhone, and I don't care how good you are with your iPhone. You still need to hire someone. Real estate photographers are not expensive. It is one of the lowest investments you'll make and you'll make your money back the quickest with professional real estate photos.

I also tell people to accept pets if you can. I know nobody wants to, but roughly half of our travelers are traveling with pets, because again they're not on vacation — when you go on vacation you leave the dog at home, but if you're staying somewhere for three to six months you have your pets. A lot of these travelers want a companion. Do what you need to do to protect yourself — a deposit, a lease amendment, whatever — but you really need to try to accept pets.

The other thing is that amenities in midterm rentals are very different from short-term rentals. Nobody needs bikes and fancy decorations or even a pool or hot tub. What these travelers really want is free parking, a washer and dryer, fast Wi-Fi, and a desk in the property. These are the things they really want because they're there for a while. If you can add those amenities, it's going to really help you.

Alex: Great. Any tips for hosts on making their properties look attractive — and actually reflect reality?

Katie: I love pops of color. We're so overwhelmed with images and content today that you want to do something to stop the scroll. I always try to pick an accent chair or a couch that's a bold color, and then just a really thoughtful amount of decorations — you don't need a lot, just be thoughtful about it. And it's okay to have fun. In a few of our properties we have bathrooms with word searches on the wall from Hobby Lobby — they were like $8 — but it makes you seem human. They don't want to go to a hotel, they're trying to stay in a home. Make them feel comfortable, have a little bit of personality, have some fun with it.

But you don't have to go wild. These travelers are often bringing a few suitcases, so give them space too. Show off a picture of a closet that has a lot of storage, because they're going to have some stuff. Think about the person who might be renting it and keep them in mind.

Alex: Exactly. This isn't going to sound super smart, but when I first joined Steadily and was learning about the short-term rental space and then heard about midterm rentals, my very first thought was just: wow, that is a really good idea. There's a huge need for this, you can collect a premium as a landlord, you're getting more consistent occupancy, and the risk profile seems a lot lower than short-term rentals while the premium you're collecting is much more similar to a short-term rental than a long-term rental.

Katie: It is. When I first started working here I knew I wanted to do real estate investing, and I quickly looked at short-term and was like, this is so overwhelming — there are going to be so many turnovers. That's totally fine if that's your jam, it's a very active investment. But it's not my jam. I want the type of investment where I can get a tenant settled in and then I'm like, okay, I'll talk to you if there's an issue, otherwise I'll talk to you in four months — not to be disrespectful, just to let them go live their lives.

You're generally looking at about one and a half to two times long-term rent, and in some markets and some property sizes you get a lot more than that. And you're not doing the turnovers, you don't have the vacancy — it's really big. In most of our properties, it's not uncommon for me to have a same-day turnover, which I don't love for my own management purposes, but even if you have a gap of three weeks between tenants, when you're putting someone in there for an average of three or four months, that three-week vacancy might feel really uncomfortable to sit with, but if you're filling it consistently for three, four, five, six months — that is a solid win.

Alex: It sounds to me like a well-managed midterm rental is a very dangerous asset — in a good way.

Katie: I should probably stop telling people, but seriously — there's room for all of us. There are just so many people in need of it. This is not a scarcity environment. There is room for everybody.

Alex: A few key takeaways here: check your insurance policies, especially that loss of rent coverage, and make sure it's going to be sufficient if something happens. On the listing side, make it pop with some colors, get professional photography, and remember a well-managed property in the midterm rental space can collect a great premium for what seems like a well-adjusted risk profile. Katie, thank you so much for joining us today on our episode of Invest Smart. Feel free to reach out to Katie Lyons over at Furnished Finder at furnishedfinder.com.