Furnished versus unfurnished for a four bed near a mid-size campus

Question

Take a plain four bedroom house eight blocks off a mid-size state school where two comps on the same street do opposite things. One is furnished, beds and desks in every room, and it rents by the bed for about 40 percent more per bed than the unfurnished one down the block that rents to a single group on one lease. The furnished one also turns every single August, which means someone is patching walls and replacing a mattress or two every year. The unfurnished one can hold the same tenants for three years running when they moved in as juniors and never left. The case for furnished is more gross rent and direct competition with purpose-built product that already has furniture. The case for unfurnished is lower capital in the door, fewer arguments about what a broken desk is worth, and turns that happen every few years instead of every year. Owners who have run both formats tend to land on a clear preference once they weigh the annual turn cost against the per-bed premium, so it is worth asking anyone who has operated both which one they would repeat.

tashaford30 · Answer

The number worth pricing before a vote is what the furniture package actually costs per bed and how many years it survives. Four hundred a bed from a warehouse store that lasts five years, and the higher rent probably eats the cost easily. Replacing mattresses annually because the deposit never covers it narrows the spread fast, and buys an August of labor along with it.

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

Worth separating two things that got bundled together. Furnished versus unfurnished is one choice. By the bed versus one group lease is a different choice, and either combination is workable. It's common to see unfurnished houses leased by the bed with joint and several language, and it works fine as long as the parental guarantee is in place. The turn cost follows the lease structure more than the furniture.

tylerbrooks9 · Answer

The split described here is worth holding onto as a real tradeoff. An owner who goes unfurnished on a group lease to avoid needing to be in town every August takes a real hit to gross rent compared to a furnished house doing per bed pricing nearby, but the phone stops ringing in July about a wardrobe door. If the goal is income without a second job, unfurnished on a group lease is the calmer shape.

diane_kowalski · Answer

I lean furnished for one reason nobody's said yet, which is that furnished is what the institutional product on that campus offers. If a 600 bed building goes up a mile from you with beds and desks included, the unfurnished house is competing on price alone. That's fine at a growing school. At a school with flat or falling enrollment you're the first one to discount.

Furnished versus unfurnished for a four bed near a mid-size campus

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