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Mid Term Rentals?
Howdy, howdy, howdy everybody. It’s John from Vacation Rentals with John. Today on this brief episode, I want to go over a strategy that’s working for me and some of my friends, and it may work for you if you’re having some issues with occupancy going into the slow season, at least in central Florida. September August, September is when kids are going back to school, you know, all that heat in July, it’s coming down and people aren’t traveling as much. They’re not in the vacation state of mind. So this strategy will help you fill up those empty gaps in your calendar if you are not getting much occupancy at all. And if you don’t use it this year, it’s something to ponder and maybe think about using in future years when you’re experiencing a lack of bookings, right? So this strategy is called midterm rentals, and it is exactly how it sounds.
Mid-Term rentals can supplement your vacation rental.
It’s not renting short term, it’s not renting long term, it’s renting midterm. And let me talk about how I’ve used this in the past. So what you can do is list your property on instead of Airbnb. You can use Trulia, you can use Craigslist, you can use Facebook, and you can use other listing sites like realtor.com, different places where others list like properties for rent to live in. And there’s lots of people looking for corporate housing, traveling nurses, students that need leases that are six months or three months in length. And you can collect a security deposit. So imagine you have a time of the year like August, September, October, that’s historically slow, and you can actually collect 2000 to $3,000 in rent for each of those months versus maybe getting a booking or two, maybe not, and then losing all of that money.
An example of how much you can charge for a mid-term rental…
So if you know you can make $9,000 over three months, and in the short term side you may make $9,000 or you may not, it makes more sense to get the sure thing going and you can use the strategy to much success if you have historically slow periods. You really just have to assess how much you can charge in your local rental market for a short term lease. And when you’re renting midterm, it, it’s going to vary on how much you can charge, but you definitely can charge more rent than people are doing for traditional 12 month leases, because when somebody’s only renting for three to six months, you can charge more rent. That’s just what’s expected and you can charge a deposit. So thinking about running midterm rentals is a great way to add to your existing offering and not stay empty because none of us want vacancy. Now, you do need to be a little more aware when you’re renting midterm because you don’t want to deal with an eviction. Like dealing with an eviction is a last thing that you’re going to want to do when you’re just trying to make some extra money in the down months. So to not deal with an eviction, the biggest thing here is since they’re not staying in your house for seven days or 10 days and they’re staying for much longer, you actually do need to do
Screening renters when doing mid-term rental is critical.
A little bit due of due diligence on who’s staying at the house. That re requires anything and everything that you would ask for in a long-term lease. So things like driver’s license, social security number occupation, employment information. So you can actually run a background check and there’s lots of background check websites that will allow you to run a background check for 20 to a hundred dollars. So it’s worth running the background check just to make sure whoever’s moving into your space for three or six months doesn’t have any criminal issues in their background. No, you know, crimes of moral turpitude, nothing bad that would make them a bad candidate for renting your place midterm. But once you run that background check, you definitely want to collect a security deposit equal to at least one month’s rent in case anything goes sideways. You have that money to protect yourself in a down scenario.
Collect security deposits and run background checks.
So you definitely want to ask for a security deposit and run those background checks and don’t rent to the first person who comes along, because if someone comes really quickly, you know, that could be good luck or that could be a really bad omen. You, you want to make sure that you’re getting the right person there because you, you’re picking one and you want to make sure that it’s the right person to take over that midterm lease. Now, something that works historically well in Orlando we have the University of Central Florida. That’s my alma matter. people, students love doing these mini leases three to six months because sometimes they just want to commit to a semester because they don’t know if they’re going to like the place or if they’re gonna be in school anymore. They just don’t know. So renting to students is one popular option.
Think student housing and traveling nurses for mid-term rental prospects…
Renting to traveling nurses another popular option. And in a lot of urban areas, there’s lots of internship programs, there’s lots of traveling professionals. so it’s good to have these midterm leases because there’s some people just looking for furnished rentals and this is going to fit the bill for them. So what websites? I mentioned a few of them, but you could really leverage Facebook. Great place to do this and all social media actually. you can use Trulia apartment finder. Corporate housing.com is a good one for rent.com. It’s a good one too. apartments.com, if you actually have an apartment and Furnished Finder, furnished Finder is a great place for this. So there’s lots of different websites that you can list your place and get activity on there. So if you’re sure that you want to have a sure thing, midterm rentals may be the way to go when you don’t have lots of occupancy in your low season. So I hope this was helpful. please join the Facebook group that I just set up. The Facebook group is going to be our insider circle where we can network, make friends, and communicate with each other about our vacation rentals and anything in general. So please join the Facebook group. There will be a link to it in the show notes, and also if you want the newsletter, just shoot me an email. Lots of fantastic stuff in there. So until next time, friends, see you later. Take care.
