Two months of furniture sitting in an empty house

I have a model for this that I have now rebuilt five times and still not used on anything, so take that for what it is worth. The single input that moves everything is days occupied, and I have never found a clean source for it. Orchard, when you built your $2,850 number, did you have any occupancy assumption at all, or were you working off monthly rent times twelve? Because that's the mistake I catch myself making. 12 months at $2,850 is $34,200 and it's a fantasy. Nine months is $25,650 and that's a real business. Six months is worse than the long-term lease.

The document question I would ask: what did your lease say about the tenant leaving early, and what did it say about the furniture? Mid-term leases I have read fall into two camps. Some are a residential lease with a furniture inventory attached and a fixed end date. Some are basically a hotel-flavored license agreement with a 30 day floor. Which one you sign changes what you can hold a departing tenant to, and landlord-tenant rules on that vary a lot state to state, so it's worth an hour with a local attorney before you use a template off the internet twice.

The $2,100 gap doesn't scare me, since I want income and I don't want a second job. The 68 days of refreshing a listing does.

Two questions, because I'm nowhere near doing this and want to understand the shape of it.

First, when it sat those 68 days, was it sitting because the price was wrong or because there was genuinely nobody in the market? Those feel like very different problems and I can't tell from the outside how you'd distinguish them.

Second, once you learned the hospital's cycle, did you keep the place furnished through the slow months or did you try to fill the gap with something else? I've seen people mention taking a longer unfurnished tenant for six months and going furnished only in the busy season, and I don't know if that actually works or if it's a thing people say.

anchor, on your second one, the version I've heard described is a nine month furnished season and a three month gap you just eat. Switching back and forth means storing the furniture, and storage plus two moves is not free.

Orchard, the thing I take from your post is that you had land discipline and applied none of it here. On a land hold you'd have spent weeks on the county site before writing a check. Here you bought a sofa first and called the hospital after. I'd have done the same thing, which is why I'm saying it out loud.

So the boring conclusion is that the furnished premium is real and the occupancy is the variable, and if you can't get information on the occupancy you're guessing on the only number that matters. That's useful to me. I'd rather have $1,750 twelve times than $2,850 eight times and a garage full of beds.

One thing nobody has asked: did the city or county have any registration requirement for you at 30 days and up? A lot of ordinances are written around stays under 30 nights, which is the whole appeal of this model, but some places also have a separate rental registration or license for anything furnished or anything under a year, and that's local, not general. I'd get the answer from the city in writing rather than from a forum, including this one.

Saving the two calls you'd make first. Housing coordinator and staffing agencies, before furniture. That's a cheap step and I would not have thought of it in that order.