An HOA clause banning leases under six months is blocking a mid term rental purchase

The screening piece is what I'd be stuck on. My whole reading lately has been about applications and verification, and a 45 day tenant doesn't fit any of it. Do you still pull credit and verify income for someone staying seven weeks, or does a signed travel contract from the staffing agency do the work? Because if the contract is your verification, you're relying on a document from a company you have no relationship with.

Run the furniture as its own line. You're spending 11,200 to earn about 800 a month more than unfurnished. That is fourteen months of the entire premium before you have covered a dollar of extra vacancy, extra turn cost, or the replacement cycle. Mattresses and sofas in a unit that turns six times a year do not last ten years. So the question I'd want answered before the HOA question is what you assume for furniture life. Four years versus eight years moves this materially.

Watch the depth of the demand pool. In a market where the nearest hospital is 90 beds, there might be four travelers in the whole county at once, and two of them are staying with family. Your six minute drive is only worth something if that hospital actually runs contract staff year round. Call the staffing coordinator and ask how many travelers they placed last year before giving any weight to what the declaration says.

Who cleans it? Six turns a year with linens, a deep clean, restocking, and someone physically checking the inventory is real labor. Either you drive over or you pay somebody 200 to 300 a turn. I ask because I'm trying to work out whether that turn work is a business someone could sell to owners like you.

Take a small four plex where one unit gets converted to furnished 30 plus day stays, and the numbers tend to run like this rather than like a guess. Year one the average gap between tenants often sits near 17 days. Year two it can drop to 9 once repeat placements from a staffing coordinator and a waitlist build up. Gross typically moves from around 1,395 unfurnished to 2,150 furnished. Furnishing runs about 8,400 up front, with a mattress and a dining set among the first replacements. So it can work, and it usually takes a year of the gaps running worse than the spreadsheet said. @stephen_ok9 is right that the furniture line is the one people wave at. Budget replacement annually, not never.

Two things on the money side. Call your carrier and ask in writing whether a standard landlord policy covers a furnished unit with stays under six months, because some carriers treat that as a different occupancy class and some do not, and it varies by state and by carrier. Also ask about contents coverage, since the 11,200 of furniture is yours rather than the tenant's. Second, if you are financing, ask the lender which rent they will use to qualify. Some will only count documented long-term market rent from the appraisal and will ignore a furnished projection. Get that answer before you fall in love with 2,450.

What breaks is the inventory. Small stuff walks, a pan gets ruined, a blind snaps, and none of it is big enough to fight over but all of it costs money and a Saturday. Take dated photos of every room before each tenant and keep a written item list they sign. Owners who skip that step on their first furnished unit often end up losing an argument over something as small as a missing remote, because there is nothing to point at.

Redoing the math with @renee_dubois's 17 days per turn. Six turns times 17 days is about 3.4 months empty, so call it 8.6 months collected at 2,450, which is 21,070. Unfurnished at 1,650 with one month vacancy is 18,150. Difference is 2,920 a year, before turn cleaning, before utilities now paid by the owner, before furniture replacement. Take out 1,500 of cleaning and 1,800 of utilities and the case is behind. The whole argument rests on the gap being closer to 9 days than 17. That's the assumption doing all the work, and it can't be known before the purchase closes.

On the clause itself, the distinction that matters is whether the six month minimum lives in the recorded declaration or in board adopted rules. A recorded restriction usually needs an owner vote to change and runs with the land. A rule the board passed can often be amended by the board, and sometimes was passed without the authority to pass it. Which of those applies, and whether it's enforceable, depends on the state's condo statute and on the document language, so that's an attorney read, not a forum read. Practically: ask the association for the declaration, all amendments, and the current rules, plus the last twelve months of board minutes. Minutes are where fining patterns show up. A few hundred dollars for a lawyer to read those is cheap against 215k.

I wanted to like this strategy and I'm ending up less sure. Six turns a year, an inventory list, cleaning coordination, chasing staffing coordinators for placements. That's a part time job with 2,900 of upside if the gaps behave. @ehernandez74, if you want income without a second job, the unfurnished 1,650 with a two year tenant might be the version you actually keep doing in year three.