At 82% occupancy the mid-term premium disappears entirely

Question

I've run this spreadsheet three times and the answer changes every time, because I don't know what belongs in the occupancy row.

Duplex, one side would be the test unit. Unfurnished long-term comps say $1,700. Furnished 30-plus-day comps say $2,400. Everything I read claims mid-term units run 90 percent plus occupancy, and then the same article says the average stay is 60 days and a turn takes a week or two to fill. Those two numbers don't sit together. Six clean 60-day tenants a year is 360 booked days with zero gap, which is obviously fantasy.

So say gaps average 12 days. That's about 300 booked days, 82 percent. $2,400 x 10 months is $24,000 against $20,400 for the long-term lease. A $3,600 spread has to cover utilities, cleaning between tenants, furniture wearing out, and the internet bill. It doesn't. Either my furnished comp is too low, my gap estimate is too high, or this only works at a rent level I can't get here.

Which row is actually wrong in real operations?

Second thing I can't find a straight answer on: if a 60-day tenant stops paying on day 45, is that a normal eviction, or does a short fixed term change the process?

Rena Expert · Accepted Answer

The gap row is the one that decides the deal, and 12 days is a reasonable number for a decent location with two or three listing channels working. Your problem isn't the gap estimate. It's that a $700 monthly spread is too thin to survive the cost stack that comes with furnished.

Run it fully. $24,000 gross at 10 booked months. Utilities and internet on a duplex side, call it $200 a month year-round because you pay them in vacant months too, so $2,400. Turns at six a year, $250 to $400 each for cleaning and linens, so roughly $2,000. Furniture and housewares reserve: a $12,000 package replaced over six years is $2,000 a year, and mid-term guests are harder on soft goods than a two-year tenant. You're at about $17,600 before management, against $20,400 gross on the long-term lease with the tenant paying utilities. The furnished route loses at these comps.

The number carrying your model is that $2,400. Confirm it's an achieved rent someone actually collected on a signed 30-plus-day lease, not an asking rate that sat listed for five weeks. If the real achieved figure is $2,900 to $3,100, the math flips.

Fewer, longer stays fix more than higher rent does. Two 150-day corporate or insurance placements beat six 60-day stays on the same annual rent because you delete four turns and four gaps.

On nonpayment: once someone occupies past 30 days most states treat them as a tenant regardless of what the agreement is titled, so you're in the regular eviction process with regular timelines. That varies by state and by city, and some jurisdictions count consecutive occupancy toward extra protections, so get it confirmed by a local landlord-tenant attorney before you sign anything.

Also call your carrier in writing. Plenty of landlord policies exclude or reprice furnished rentals with tenant turnover inside 12 months.

brandonlee36 · Answer

The row I'd argue with is the 60-day average stay. Ask where 60 came from. Travel healthcare contracts are 13 weeks, which is 91 days, and extensions run another 13. If you cap at 90 you've excluded the single largest tenant pool in this niche by one day. Set the ceiling at 6 months and let the tenant pick. Gaps stop clustering once your typical stay is a quarter long instead of two months.

renee_dubois · Answer

Thicket's right about the 91 days. The other thing your duplex gives you that a single-family doesn't is a hedge: run one side furnished mid-term and keep the other on a 12-month lease, so a bad two-month gap is annoying rather than fatal. Check your meters first though. If the duplex is on one gas meter and one water meter you're eating those on the long-term side too, and that's the number that ends up ruining the comparison. Mine is split electric, shared water, and it changes every calculation I do!

karen_whitfield · Answer

A $700 spread on a $1,700 base doesn't pay for furniture plus six turns. I'd lease it unfurnished and go do something else.

paulgrant17 · Answer

Do travel nurse agencies verify income directly, or am I supposed to just accept the contract letter?

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

One more place to look before you build the fourth version of that spreadsheet. The short-term ordinance is not the only rule with a term length in it. Zoning codes in some towns define a minimum lease term or classify frequent-turnover furnished units as lodging or a rooming house use, and that language sits in the zoning chapter rather than the rental ordinance, so people read one and miss the other. Deed restrictions and HOA docs are worse, I've seen 6 and 12 month minimums written into covenants that no city official will ever enforce or warn you about. All of this is local, so pull the actual text for your parcel's district.

Rena Guide · Answer

Two definitions that will make the rest of this thread easier to follow, since juniper said she's reading everything twice.

Gap days are the calendar days between one tenant moving out and the next moving in. They're separate from turn cost, which is the money you spend on that gap: cleaning, laundry, restocking, repainting a scuffed wall. Occupancy percentage is just booked days divided by 365, and effective annual rent is what you actually collect after those empty days, which is the only rent figure worth comparing against a 12-month lease.

Furniture reserve is the piece beginners leave out. You buy a sofa once, but it doesn't last forever, so you set aside a monthly amount equal to the package cost divided by its expected life. Ignoring it makes year one look great and year five look like a surprise.

On the term itself: in this room mid-term means stays of 30 days or more, and that 30-day line matters because most nightly-rental ordinances apply below it. Loose market usage is broader, and you'll see furnished units advertised as mid-term with two-week minimums. Those aren't the same product, and a two-week minimum can put you squarely inside the short-term rules you were trying to avoid. Whether a specific ordinance applies depends on how it's written, so read your own city's definition rather than a general article.

To wren's question: agencies generally won't verify a placement to a landlord without the traveler's written authorization, and the usual path is the tenant supplying the contract plus recent pay stubs, then you confirm the assignment dates.

At 82% occupancy the mid-term premium disappears entirely

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