[00:00:00] Mark: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome everybody. I hope you are doing very well wherever you are around the world. We're very excited today to be talking to you all about the midterm rental MTIs, and I've got a very special guest who's going to be joining me, uh, all the way from Furnished Finder.
[00:00:18] Mark: He's the CEO Mr. Jeff Hurst. Um, so before we do begin. I just wanna just, uh, jump in and just say hello to everybody. Um, hope you are all good. Can you just please let me know where you are tuning in from, uh, around the world? Like I say, it's, it's good to see, uh, so many faces that I, uh, I recognize here, but it'd be cool to see.
[00:00:40] Mark: Again, where, where everybody is tuning in from around the world. Uh, Joanna, hope you're well. Mark Renee, Julie Elle, uh, Jori Kelly, Axel Adilla, Susan, uh, fantastic to have you all. And we are joined by Mr. Jeff Hurst. Just on my, on my right here. I, hello Jeff. Hope you're doing well. Uh, can you hear us and can you see us okay?
[00:01:03] Jeff: I can hear and I can see, can you hear and see me?
[00:01:06] Mark: Absolutely. So you've been at a, a conference the last few days, is that right?
[00:01:10] Jeff: I have. I've been at the REI Better Life Summit here in Austin, Texas. So Brandon Turner's big event was a, it was pretty huge turnout.
[00:01:19] Mark: Yeah, it looked good on, it looked good on the socials.
[00:01:22] Mark: A lot of people that I know were, were there. So it looked, uh, it looked very good. Uh, so everybody, uh, if you could just please, as you're in the chat, just let us know where you're tuning in from, uh, wherever you are around the world. But Jeff, if you could just, uh, do us a massive favor to everybody who's in the room.
[00:01:35] Mark: Just, uh, give us a quick introduction of yourself and, and how you then came to, uh, be at, uh, furnish Finder.
[00:01:41] Jeff: My pleasure. So, uh, hello everybody, and a huge thanks to Mark for having me, uh, having me join you today. My name's Jeff Hurst. I'm coming to you from Austin, Texas, uh, where I'm the CEO Furnish Finder.
[00:01:53] Jeff: I've had this job for about a year and a half. Uh, prior to that, I, uh, was pretty early at HomeAway. Uh, when it was a private company, I was on the strategy team and was the Chief Strategy officer When we sold to Expedia Group, uh, I stayed on at Expedia Group and was the Chief Commercial Officer and then president of, uh, VRBO, uh, writ vrbo.
[00:02:15] Jeff: And, uh, then was the, uh, chief Operating Officer of Expedia Group. Uh, I left about three years ago, took some time off and, uh, ended up joining Furnish Finder when I met the founders. And they were enthusiastic that maybe I could do this job instead of them. And so they joined the board and I've been at it for about a year and a half now.
[00:02:35] Jeff: Mm-hmm. Uh, was amazed. I had never heard of Furnish Finder, which I think makes me a not great short-term rental executive, uh, because it's a pretty large platform and have been, uh, you know, really, um. Really impacted by what a throwback it is. Like, it's just a very traditional, classified marketplace and it's, I think doing a lot of people a lot of good and a space that deserves a little more sunlight.
[00:02:58] Mark: Absolutely. So just gonna open a question out to everybody who's watching in live and, and we are recording this live. We, we've got people in the room with us, but obviously we are gonna record this and put this out as a, a brucely podcast episode as well. So those of you who are lucky enough to tune in live with us, you are gonna get a chance to ask questions that you may have, but I'm intrigued.
[00:03:16] Mark: Just to know the people that are in the room here, who here is already adopting the, the MTR strategy, the 30 day stay strategy in, into, into your business. And if you do, what questions do you have around it? So, uh, you've been doing this, like I said now for, for whatever a, a year, Jeff, what has been obviously coming from the, the STR sort of background now doing obviously Furnish Finder, which is heavy on the MTI, what's been the sort of biggest eye-opener.
[00:03:41] Mark: For you since coming into this in, in, into this world and, and like what sort of thing that you didn't expect but uh, has, has sort of like hit you since you've been doing this?
[00:03:51] Jeff: It's, um, the easiest way to describe it is dejavu, you know, it feels like, I think it feels like before I even joined HomeAway, I think it feels like pre 2010, um, you've got.
[00:04:04] Jeff: You know, from the tenant side, the shopper side, you've got a value proposition that's off the charts good. And so, you know, people are putting these houses out there, they're competing with corporate housing or extended stay hotels. Or Airbnbs that have a ton of fees and a lot of additional surcharges and taxes.
[00:04:21] Jeff: And so you just have a great value proposition for tenants. And then on the flip side, you've got a community of landlords that I think is, uh, really excited about the service they're offering, but does not yet have great technology or systems or processes for it. And you know, I think the way Furnish Finder as a site evolved is kind of like that.
[00:04:40] Jeff: It feels like 2007 VRBO. You know, submit an inquiry, see what happens, hope the calendar's available, hope somebody gets back to you. So there's so much room for improvement to modernize the experience, but still maintain that killer value proposition that, uh, yeah, I just felt like I was in a time machine and I kind of knew what to do next in order to get us started.
[00:04:59] Mark: Nice. And. Obviously now you've, you've, uh, obviously been a furnish finder for well over a year, and you've got a chance to engage with, with people that are using the platform. What do you think is the biggest, from what you know, a furnish finder now, what do you think is the biggest mis misconception that people have about furnish Finder?
[00:05:17] Jeff: For sure. The biggest misconception is that it's a travel nurse platform. And so, and, and that's not shocking. Like two years ago, two and a half years ago, it was a travel nurse platform. And so, you know, furnish Finder really found its niche. During COVID when there was a huge travel nurse shortage, there was a huge mobility crisis and people rallied around the platform to help travel nurses find homes nursing's down about 30 or 40%.
[00:05:39] Jeff: Since then. Um, and since then, you know, travel nursing is about 25% of what we do. Corporates bigger relocating families is the fastest growing, and so people come to the site to find a nurse. They're sometimes really pleasantly surprised. They ended up with a corporate traveler or a digital nomad, or a traveling professor in his family.
[00:05:56] Jeff: And sometimes they're honestly pissed off that they didn't get a nurse. It's like, I came here for a nurse and now I don't have one and this isn't what I signed up for. And it's just that expectation settings. Um, yeah, that's been, that, that, that's taking some, getting used to.
[00:06:09] Mark: So do we have like, uh, numbers?
[00:06:11] Mark: So how many people are now listed as in, listed in their properties, their units on furnish finder and like how many people have you got on the books that are looking for, uh, accommodation? Do you have sort of numbers that you can share?
[00:06:22] Jeff: Yeah, so we have, uh, about 235,000 paying landlords today. Um, and uh, we have about 300,000 listings now of those listings.
[00:06:33] Jeff: The majority call it. Probably almost 250,000 are whole homes, you know, whether that's a town home or an apartment or a condo or a single family. And about 50,000 are rooms. And so we actually have a pretty big room rental business. Um, we do let complexes on if anybody's, you know, in the multifamily space.
[00:06:50] Jeff: And we do have hotels, but the hotels are a little bit more in the European variety. It's more of a condo tell typically. You know, like a, uh, you know, uh, embassy Suites would be like a closer version in the us but actually an Embassy Suites Plus is kind of where I think the sweet spot is. And on the tenant side, um, you know, tenant demand's growing about 40% year on year.
[00:07:12] Jeff: I think we've had 3 million inquiries year to date. Um, and so, you know, that's a, uh, huge book of shoppers who are trying to find something. And if anything, we've got, you know, we have a supply shortage right now. Um, it worked. Trying to solve it.
[00:07:25] Mark: There we go. And this is why we're doing this. We're gonna spread the, spread the word.
[00:07:28] Mark: So there, there's a lot of people that, that tune into the, tune into the podcast, watch the YouTube, join us live at obviously, um, I would say predominantly are sitting in those STI category. They'll von Airbnb and all these platforms and, and looking to get, looking to get those stage. But obviously depending on your market, everybody would, would love to be able to, uh, work less and.
[00:07:51] Mark: Get more income. This is obviously where the 30 day stays is really appealable. And obviously the BiggerPockets crew I think, created this sort of MTR sort of terminology and obviously it's spread like that since, since of, well, since three or four years ago now. Um, and I guess I. If there's a message that, that, obviously you've been at conferences, you're speaking at events, you've, you've, you're interacting with hosts and obviously people are coming over to the furnish finder booth and wanting to find out more about you.
[00:08:18] Mark: And, and these are predominantly hosts are on short-term rentals. What do you think are their biggest pain points that they're coming up to you with? Yeah. Um, and, and, and talking to you about it and, and how are you sort of aligning those pain points?
[00:08:30] Jeff: Yeah. There's, I'd say there's, there's three broad pain points, you know, uh, a very common one is regulatory.
[00:08:37] Jeff: You know, I bought this place and pick any major American city that's not tourism driven, and now there's a licensing cap, or there's a density cap, or I can only rent it for 30 days or more, whatever that is. Um, and so they're, they're basically, it's a flight to safety. They're looking for a means to rent their home, uh, when you've got, you know, a max rental cap or a minimum nights stay cap.
[00:09:02] Jeff: And so, you know, we're a good platform for that. The, the hardest part about this use case is that the footprint and target geography for the typical short-term rental is different enough from the midterm rental target that it's not a, it's not a perfect match. And so, you know, if you bought a place with an investment thesis of how you can, um.
[00:09:25] Jeff: Basically be a short term rental. I think it is hard to get the exact same math you had in your ambitions as a midterm rental. If you bought a three bedroom that's close to, you know, a downtown corridor, something like that. 'cause the price points don't match up. So that's the first use case is regulatory.
[00:09:40] Jeff: The second, which I think is really quite good is, um, a hybrid strategy. So it's, you know, I'm in Michigan or a place where I've got a big off season. How do I transition out of that off season to use Vantage Finder to fill gaps. Um, and then the third is, uh, short-term rental customers who are actually looking to get a different type of inventory because they're frustrated with it.
[00:10:00] Jeff: So they're asking where to buy, what do I buy? How do I get it to work better?
[00:10:03] Mark: Okay then. So I've just been asking, uh, in, in the chat and like I just said, who's, who's using Furnish Finder. So I think this is great because this is, this is why we're doing this. We want more people to be aware of it. So we've got, um, Julie said that I used to do it was on there for a year and didn't get any, any renters.
[00:10:19] Mark: Obviously this is something that will come up to you and you've been in this, doing this now for 18 months, and this is probably one of the most common things that you and your team sees. Um, if you could say something to, to, to Julie that would sort of go, oh, fantastic. I want to give this a, a go again.
[00:10:32] Mark: What, what, what would you be saying?
[00:10:34] Jeff: Um, you know, the, the, the first part is starting with like a reminder of what our target audience is. And so let me kind of like talk through. How, you know if you've got a good, um, good opportunity for furnish finder. So our tenant types, 35% corporate. They're looking to be near a commuter corridor next to a corporate campus, or often a construction site.
[00:10:55] Jeff: A lot of our travel is construction travel. And so, you know, these crews move around the world. They're building data centers, they're building skyscrapers, they're outfitting restaurants. So 35% is construction travel or c corporate travel, traveling for work, non-medical. That use case, they spend about $2,000 a month and they're typically in a one or two bedroom home.
[00:11:14] Jeff: Uh, the second biggest use case is traveling nurses. Now traveling nurses a lot smaller than it was several years ago. They're almost always in a studio or one bedroom. And the stipends have gone down quite a bit as the pandemic receded, so they're spending more like $1,700 a month. And I see a lot of misconceptions around.
[00:11:32] Jeff: I've got a place that's perfect for a nurse. It's $3,000, it's $2,500. They are very unlikely to spend a dollar more than is under stipend. And so that stipend amount dictates the budget. The third use case and the fastest growing. Where I think there's a lot of promise for, um, uh, for short-term rental converts is relocating families.
[00:11:52] Jeff: And so what's unique about the category? You know, these are spent, these families are spending more like $2,500, more like a three bedroom footprint, and they're frequently moving to a neighborhood to try before they buy. Or they're remodeling a kitchen, building a home, and need a place that's in the right school district with the right commute.
[00:12:09] Jeff: And so this is the fastest growing category, and the price point tends to be a little closer footprint and dollar wise to what you see in short term rentals. And then the fourth use case is academics. It's usually graduate students with families or professors with families. They move a lot, but you've gotta be close to a university.
[00:12:25] Jeff: And so none of what I said was close to the beach, close to a lake, close to the mountains, you know? The hip part of town by all the restaurants and where the hotels are. It's just a different type of geography. It's usually a lower dollar value home. And so I do get a, you know, I get a ton of people telling me, you know, I was on and it didn't work out.
[00:12:44] Jeff: A lot of times I don't think the home was a match. I do think we had a tough period coming out of 2022. Where people had big traveling medical aspirations and the bottom started to fall out of that, and we did not replace that fast enough. And we're just now getting back to a place where I think the tenant footprints diversified enough to serve more use cases.
[00:13:02] Jeff: Hmm.
[00:13:04] Mark: So, uh, basically come and give it a go. Give it a go again. We've got new people. I mean, there, there
[00:13:08] Jeff: is a bit of it. There is a bit of it, which is, it's $179. I'm not guaranteeing it works for everyone, but 80% of people who sign up get a direct inquiry in the first 30 days. Um, and so someone is trying to book their house.
[00:13:21] Jeff: Um, they may also be trying to book another house and it's a little bit of a jump ball, but. Give it a go. Give it
[00:13:27] Mark: a go. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and again, it's, it's, it's a real nice take when, whenever other platform is zigging with obviously the commission model, you've gone down the other route, which is obviously the, like you say, it's the, it's the, it's the online travel agents of before 2010, uh, like you say, where it was more of a, it was more of a, a, a subscription based, uh, subscription based one, which again, is, is fascinating.
[00:13:50] Jeff: Yeah. And you, you, you think about the, you know, why are people choosing us, you know, if you're. Average travel nurse in the US makes call it $90,000 travel nine months out of the year. They're gonna get back almost two weeks of take home pay by not booking on Airbnb. Like they're willing to do a little bit more work on our site to take back two weeks of take home pay, which is how the stipends work.
[00:14:11] Jeff: And so it's a big deal to not pay 12 to 15% every time, and the landlords and tenants get to share it.
[00:14:18] Mark: Yeah, ab, absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about Airbnb a little bit more. Now, obviously they've had a lot of, um, updates recently. We've had the summer updates and we've had the, the, the policy updates, et cetera.
[00:14:29] Mark: Now you can, you can talk to this to a certain extent because obviously you have come from one of the big O OTAs and where, where do you see. Everything's sort of shifting, shifting to what do you feel like the, the theory is, like your theory and your opinion around the changes that they've made. Um, how would you, I know if you were still obviously in your, uh, uh, other seat, what would you be thinking about this and, and how can you sort of like then pass on words of, words of wisdom and guidance to the people that are in the room?
[00:14:59] Jeff: Yeah, let, let's take 'em separate. 'cause I think the, the new category launches is a very different evolution from the policy changes they made. So they, they, they didn't really announce, they just kind of made policy changes and swept 'em into the Ts and Cs that were, you know, essentially in some cases validating what was already in place, you know.
[00:15:17] Jeff: Don't take anyone off platform. You know, I think they had some stricter language around repeat guests and not trying to encourage people to book direct with you through the platform. Um, and then they had a lot of new language that they've since clarified somewhat around. There's nothing you can do in the house to capture emails, to establish a direct relationship that impacts the ability to use the house.
[00:15:37] Jeff: Um, and that I think was really aimed at property managers, but you know, it's all an effort. In that sense, I think to increase their monetization, you know, their US business is growing. I think they said it was about 5% as of Q1. Um, it's relatively stagnant. And so they're talking about how do we go increase the profitability and monetization of that business policies like this.
[00:15:59] Jeff: Um, and then separately, how do they go launch new categories and grow further outside of the us? And so I think that the, um. You know, the important thing to remember for everybody who's a customer of theirs is that, that you have, you're in a very unequal relationship. Um, you know, they have 1.6 million of you and you have one of them.
[00:16:17] Jeff: And so, uh, being sure you're diversified, being sure that you use them as a tool as opposed to the entire engine for your business, you know, and that's how he got to know Mark's content was like, I believe in what he's saying. And I was always very consistent at vrbo. And saying, they're like, I think you should be on multiple platforms.
[00:16:33] Jeff: I think it's good for your business. I've got three short-term rentals. Every one of 'em is on Airbnb. I think it's kind of crazy not to be on Airbnb midterm, a little different, but I'd still encourage people to probably be on Airbnb. 'cause you shouldn't even be entirely dependent on furnish finder. You know, you need to have multiple sources.
[00:16:49] Jeff: And so that, that's my, my, my take on is they're gonna keep tightening the screws because they can. And that it helps them economically with their stock price. The second piece, you know, what they've launched with the new categories. Um, I think it's interesting. Uh, I'm not as bearish in it as a lot of people just because the brand has so much affinity and so much demand going through it that I think they can probably get these things to work.
[00:17:15] Jeff: Um, I don't think there's anything that's particularly good for the homeowners or the hosts. Uh, you know. Neutral at best, probably. And there'll be a lot of pretty bizarre stories of like, the things that went wrong when the, you know, when the masseuse or the chef or the whoever screwed up the house and who's responsible for it and all that sort of thing.
[00:17:34] Jeff: The, um, the thing that, you know, I, I, I'm a big fan of a, uh, uh. Author, a blogger on the internet. Uh, Ben Thompson, if anyone doesn't read him, he is a, uh, internet technology strategist. He wrote a great piece on this and I really agree with him that the, uh, the reason this category will be different and harder for them is there's hard, marginal costs.
[00:17:56] Jeff: You have to get someone to give up another moneymaking opportunity to take this one. Whereas in the house sharing space, usually when it's working, it's a vacant asset. There's no marginal cost. You're filling a house that otherwise was going unused, and so it's all upside. I think it's gonna be really hard for them to get the same type of velocity on the supply side that they've been able to get on the home side to make this marketplace magical.
[00:18:18] Jeff: I think it's gonna feel a little bit more like traffic acquisition and pr. And for this, you know, much wealthier customers. Great. You got another place to buy a chef, you got another place to get a masseuse.
[00:18:28] Mark: Hmm. Yeah. Who, who was that offer again? Sorry.
[00:18:31] Jeff: Ben. Ben. Ben Thompson's his name. Uh, some of his stuff is free.
[00:18:35] Jeff: I think it's a, he runs a, uh, daily newsletter that's all about technology strategy. It's very frequently consumer and really compelling. It's very often. Super heavy hardware and I kind of glaze over. Um mm-hmm. But he's, he's definitely a good read. He used to be managed to find
[00:18:53] Mark: the blog
[00:18:53] Jeff: American technologist, and now he's, uh, he writes outta Korea, I think.
[00:18:57] Mark: Fantastic. I will, uh, I will add that to the read list now. Put the link to his blog in the chat and we'll do all that. That sounds fascinating. So, okay, well let's bring it, um, thank you for your insights on Airbnb. That's, that's fantastic to see. And obviously you come at it with so much. Wisdom from obviously previous seats that you've had, but let's bring it back to furnish finders.
[00:19:16] Mark: So we've got a tactical question, which I like from, from Elle. So Elle is, uh, in Baltimore. Uh, we, uh, are about to market to traveling nurses and academics In Baltimore. We are located 1.5 miles from three major medical systems. Uh, do you have any advice on how they could set up the home that would appeal to those types of clients?
[00:19:38] Jeff: Um, Baltimore's a great spot for this. Uh, a few things. So we have a bunch of resources on our site. Uh, one is furnish finder.com, back slash stats. Uh, you can type in any city in the US and we'll tell you how much inventory's there, how many page views are there, how many travelers are searching, those sorts of things.
[00:19:57] Jeff: I will self admit the page, you know, needs a makeover. Uh, we, we will make it. More compelling in terms of how the, it's more useful to a use case, like a one bedroom or a two bedroom or a zip code, because right now it's a little bit too broad. Um, now, so I'd start there. Um, I do think it's helpful to calibrate with tools like Air DNA or Price Labs or just use the estimators like a Zillow or vrbo to kind of get a sense on like each side of the market, you know, in a long term I can earn this in a short term, I can earn this.
[00:20:28] Jeff: You can very reasonably assume that in a midterm you're gonna earn something in the middle. Um, and the um. The benefit of it, why I think you can make more money is that, uh, you don't have nearly as many turnovers. You don't have to invest nearly as much into Elle's question on how to set up the home.
[00:20:45] Jeff: You're setting up a home for someone who's working eight to 12 hours a day and needs a place to like unwind, sleep, have a meal, and so we usually advise that between five and $7 a square foot. You can outfit your home for midterm, you know that number would be much higher on short term. You know, you're buying all the flat screens, all the cooking gear, investing in pickleball or hot tub, or whatever the heck they're saying you need.
[00:21:07] Jeff: These days, there's not the same arms race. At midterm, you're competing more on value and location. And so you can get set up relatively cheaply and you can usually get by with something that feels more like a duplex than, you know, a craft Victorian home with a yard on a large lot with a two car garage.
[00:21:24] Jeff: You just don't need it all. And so if you think about the cash return profile, you're, you're, you're getting less in return, but you're spending way less and also using a lot less of your time. So I would check out the stats page. I would also, um, go through our catalog of podcast, which is called Landlord Diaries.
[00:21:41] Jeff: And we cover a ton of different topics like how to design, how to set up, what to do for nurses, what to do for corporate. I think there's over a hundred episodes now.
[00:21:49] Mark: Yeah, a hundred percent. Really, really good one. And so that link is furnish finder.com/stats. Ava put a link in the chat as, as well, and I guess this sort of ties into the question that Mark had is do you have a map tool to see if a listing matches with potentially being a good fit?
[00:22:08] Mark: So yeah, is there a, is there a way that they can go? Right. I'm, I'm, I'm looking for, X is a Y.
[00:22:14] Jeff: Yeah. Uh, coming soon and no. The only thing we have now is that stats page. Uh, we're looking at either partnerships or building our own. That would be the equivalent of tell us the address and we'll tell you the comp set and what we think it'll do, but we've not built that yet.
[00:22:28] Mark: Like so is is one of another one of my questions, which nicely leads us on what is the roadmap for the rest of 2025 as we go into Q3 of 2025. Looking at Q4, you know, by the end of this year, what would, yeah. What's like your goals and, and what would you like the, to, to, to, to sort of be scratched off for 2025?
[00:22:46] Jeff: Yeah. The, the, um, the biggest thing is that we are a, uh, you know, we're a tech, we're a tech company. We're a consumer tech company that doesn't have great technology yet. And so we've had to basically rebuild the technology platform. This company was started in 2014. It was bootstrapped, it was a very small team.
[00:23:04] Jeff: So in the past year and a half, we've hired a lot of. Additional and more experienced technologists to rebuild the, rebuild the entire thing. And so what you should expect is that if you've used the site, you'll know that it's like, um, you know, it's, it's got some quirks and so we're fixing it so that it feels modern.
[00:23:25] Jeff: You know, the shopping experience should feel just like Airbnb, except. You don't book on our site because we're not charging the commissions and we want you to have control over. Use your own phone call, talk to 'em, have a video, like whatever your system is. We don't wanna get in the way of that, but the shopping experience will get easier.
[00:23:41] Jeff: The next thing we're building, and we've built a lot of that. Messaging is the next big thing. We're improving. So we're implementing a modern messaging system. It'll collaborate with other messaging platforms. You'll be able to import, export, have auto replies, have ai. That'll be a big change, and that will also help us know who's responding and not responding.
[00:23:58] Jeff: After that, we're gonna redo the landlord tools and the landlord tools. Need a lot of redoing. It's a clunky onboarding process. We need to be able to integrate. I'm sure a lot of you use Guestie or hostly or Host Away or different providers. We need to integrate with the different providers and figure out how we can help connect those.
[00:24:15] Jeff: And so we'll be doing that too. And that's kind of, that gets us probably through the next year. Um, but don't think of it as like, what's the huge innovation? Think of it as like, how do we build something that's fast and parody because we're gonna do it so much cheaper than everyone else.
[00:24:29] Mark: Yeah, I like that.
[00:24:30] Mark: And, uh, uh, good luck with all the integrations. I've been doing it for 10 years. I've got the war rooms. Gosh. But, uh, but yeah, the good news is I don't have
[00:24:39] Jeff: to integrate commerce.
[00:24:41] Mark: There you go. There you go. They're very much so. Uh, so there's been a fantastic question come in and I feel like this is probably one that you and your team would get more.
[00:24:49] Mark: More than any from, I can think from a, from an existing short-term rental owner. So obviously we've got Renee, we've got Julie, they do short-term rentals, but they, they, they like the idea of a 30 day plus stay, but they obviously don't want to cut off their nose, spite their face, they'd like the cake and eat it.
[00:25:04] Mark: Totally. They want the STR and the MTR. So do you have any sort of best tips on how you can do this while you can still have your STR, but then have your MTR as well?
[00:25:15] Jeff: Yeah, I, I, I always describe it as like it's a, um. Your calendar's gonna start to look like a losing game of Tetris or a losing game of Jenga.
[00:25:23] Jeff: You know, there's all these holes and there's all these different pieces. And when your calendar starts to look like that as a short term rental, you'll never be successful as a midterm rental because you can't take a four month rental when you've got two weekends booked in the middle of the four months.
[00:25:35] Jeff: And so, um, the strategies I recommend, one, if you are in a very seasonal destination. Block out your shoulder season or your, or your off season, just totally block it out and make that season only available for 30 days plus days. Um, and when you get to that season in our, our book to Stay Windows just over 30 days, so a month and a half before the season, put it on Furnish Finder, open the calendar and try and book the season you're trying to book.
[00:26:03] Jeff: And so if you're, and then if you're using Price Labs or on Airbnb. Set it so that for that season you only take bookings longer than 30 days. Um, and you know, just be sure that your calendars are both in order and your pricing's in order. So I'd say that's the easier strategy, uh, is that when you're going season to season, the harder one is when you want to be, um, you want to be short term and midterm all the time, but you actually wanna have a chance at beating Jenga and Tetris and getting a midterm booking.
[00:26:31] Jeff: What I see the most success here. Is really take a look at your past booking history and what your book to stay window is. But typically somewhere in the three to four weeks, I'll accept short-term rentals for the next three to four weeks, and that's it. And so on Airbnb, you would set your availability to only accept those three to four weeks, and then you'd be taking 30 day plus for anything after three to four weeks, whether that's through furnish finder, other platforms, but that allows you to kind of keep the short term rentals coming in and rolling, you know, you're, you're still getting some income while you try and find that 2, 3, 6 month booking.
[00:27:08] Jeff: And then when you get that, you can go. Block out the rest of it.
[00:27:13] Mark: Hmm. So it, it, it then becomes a game of, um, chicken really, you know, and, and it, and you know what, when, when you are saying those numbers, I guarantee that people are like, oof. 'cause I, I know, I know what it's like. People like to have obviously the, the calendar filled up for, for many, many months.
[00:27:30] Mark: But I feel like what I would add to this is that the booking windows and the booking patterns are changing so much. The, the, the lead time is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So when Jeff is saying about, you know, have your window open, but restrict it a little bit, 'cause then it gives you the opportunity to investigate and look into.
[00:27:51] Mark: That MTR strategy. Go for it. And what, what I would also add as well is this is where sales and marketing, I mean it, I've, I've said this for a long time. The MTR strategy, you have to be good at sales, you have to be good at marketing because obviously at the end of the day, MTR strategy is a, is a relationship game.
[00:28:09] Mark: The more relationships you can make, the better you will do in this. And you can start doing your research now by simply. You know, Baltimore Prime example, those three locations that, uh, that ary noticed there, just dropping calls and finding out who's the accommodation specialist, the relocation specialist, having those conversations, seeing what the demand is, and seeing if there is a need for it.
[00:28:32] Mark: And, you know, you never know what could happen. Someone could just turn around to you and go, you know, ary. Yeah, absolutely. We, we actually have a lead here. Somebody needs a place for three months. Yeah. And then you can go, okay, that's interesting. You don't have to do out on it. You can sit on it for a little bit, especially if you've got bookings that's coming up for the next three months in your SDI calendar.
[00:28:48] Mark: But then if you get enough people come back to you, you can go, oh, okay. And then you can start to implement.
[00:28:53] Jeff: It's a, it's a critical point mark because it is not as passive as being on Airbnb. You know, you've gotta be replying, you know, the bookings don't just show up. Um, and you do end up having to do a little bit more hustle.
[00:29:03] Jeff: The one thing I'd add is that. And, and I, I don't think people appreciate this on Airbnb enough. You know, I, I think the tool Airbnb built for how you accommodate a two month stay where they'll recommend two, three, or four homes is a fascinatingly cool tool. I actually think it's a really interesting product, but it speaks to a very big issue for Airbnb, which is that they acknowledge Tetris and Jenga is a problem.
[00:29:27] Jeff: And so I think you might find an unexpected benefit, and I've heard this from a lot of our customers of when you set your minimum stay to 30 days on Airbnb. What also happens is you get more 30 day stays from Airbnb because you become one of the only calendars that doesn't have a Jenga problem and you've actually got full availability for three months and somebody on Airbnb's really looking for it.
[00:29:48] Jeff: And Airbnb shows 'em three options that include three house jumps and your option, and you're gonna win that one every time. 'cause people don't wanna move three times.
[00:29:56] Mark: Hmm. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, um, a really interesting stat that that that's been thrown around quite a lot is that one in every five stays on Airbnb is for over 30 days.
[00:30:07] Mark: Um, which is obviously, it shows what type of clientele, what's the data, what the people are moving around and where we are at the current moment. Um, okay, so another question
[00:30:15] Jeff: so we don't mislead people with their misleading stat mark. It's one in every five nights booked on Airbnb as part of a 30 day or longer stay.
[00:30:24] Jeff: But interestingly because those stays are so long, it's way fewer stays. It's probably one in every 15 or 20 stays. 'cause most stays are two nights. But they kind of started using that stat to, I think, muddy the waters a little bit.
[00:30:37] Mark: Yes. And so it's
[00:30:38] Jeff: a ton of nights, but it's actually not nearly, nearly as many stays
[00:30:41] Mark: Interesting.
[00:30:42] Mark: There always context around these stats that they throw out. I like that. Um, okay, so is there a way to use Air DNA to analyze and address.
[00:30:51] Jeff: TI hope so soon. And so, uh, I'm actually hoping to get some time with Jamie over at Air DNA and talk through like what are the options for us to partner, you know, whether it's them or Price Labs or multiple companies.
[00:31:04] Jeff: Uh, there is not a built-in tool. I've actually seen some people have pretty good success using chat GPT for this. Uh, and so talking about, you know. This is where my home is. Tell me about similar properties and what you're seeing on Furnish Finder. Tell me about Airbnb and let check GPT kind of talk you through it.
[00:31:21] Jeff: We are going to build a tool, but there is not something that I feel comfortable saying like with endorsement. Here's the one, go look at it. What I really encourage people to do is look at the hotels close to you, the Airbnb's close to you, and the furnish finder inventory, and just see if you've got a house that you think a consumer would prefer at your price point.
[00:31:38] Jeff: Mm.
[00:31:39] Mark: Yeah, absolutely. And, um, ary, uh, one of the questions you had earlier about, about pricing this up, Jeff gave a really good like idea earlier of, I'd say, looking, um, at the long term market, the short term market, and then you get the pricing somewhere in between. But again, the main thing to do is just to start calling, start reaching out, start messaging people, find out what the budget is.
[00:32:00] Mark: You know, there's, there's so many different a, a avenues and, and, and sort of ways that you can go. You can go through this.
[00:32:05] Jeff: And that's a, remember, that's an interesting thing about the platform too. Like we have phone numbers on our listings. If there's a listing that looks just like yours three blocks away, give 'em a call, ask 'em how it's going.
[00:32:15] Jeff: There's a chance. They'll say It's been awful, and then you've got an answer and there's a chance they'll tell you. It's been great. Uh, but I, I, I think there's a lot of, there's enough opportunity to where people aren't protective of the space yet.
[00:32:25] Mark: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's amazing. I feel like. I dunno what it's about this day and age, but we are so scared about picking up the phone and having a conversation, but you'd be worried that someone's gonna just shut you down or say no.
[00:32:35] Mark: I mean, the worst they're gonna say is no. So if they're not gonna give any advice, that's fine. Let's move on to, to, to to the next one. But you know, the, the research is there, the numbers are there, the people are there to contact and you can sort of start to, start to put in your research before you go.
[00:32:50] Mark: You go all in. Um, Jeff, um. If people wanna get started. So let's just say we've got people in the room or people listening on, on the replay and, you know, they've never dipped the toe into furnish finder. You mentioned it's, it's a price and it's a subscription fee. Like how does it work? How can we get started?
[00:33:06] Mark: Let's say I've got two properties. Um, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm in Baltimore, so to speak. How do we do
[00:33:11] Jeff: this? Yeah. You've got, you've got a property, you know, let's say you've got a one bedroom in Baltimore and you want to get started, you, um. Come to furnish finder.com. You know, list your property in the same place as every other website on the planet.
[00:33:21] Jeff: Uh, fill out a lead form. It's $179 a year after you pay us $179. You build your listing. You know, in general, workflow's very similar to Airbnb or vrbo. Primary difference is you don't have to onboard for payments, and so there's a little less friction around. Connect your bank accounts, do all that stuff.
[00:33:40] Jeff: You're mainly photos, description, amenities, and set your availability date. And then you're off to the races. We do require, uh, identification. So we do do an ID check, um, and you know, but I think for somebody who's experienced in the category as a short term owner, you know, my guess is you're from the time you get to the site, if you've got your photos, you know, you're live in an hour, um, and then the $179 covers you for a year.
[00:34:04] Jeff: You can keep autorenew on or off, depending on your preference. And then you basically just set your calendar to open when you need a booking. And when you get a booking, we ask that you block your calendar. And then you open it up, you know, block your calendar for three months and then we'll start surfacing you automatically when your three months is coming up as people start searching for your next availability date.
[00:34:24] Mark: Nice, nice. So
[00:34:26] Jeff: sorry, worth noting. You know, because there's no commerce, people either send you what's called a booking request, which tells you their occupation, number of people, pets, everything about 'em. They send you a message, which is most often. Do you really accept pets? And what about my 60 pound Rottweiler?
[00:34:41] Jeff: Or there is a click to reveal phone number and they'll call and just, you know, you'll get a call. They may not even mention Furnish Finder, it'll just be like, Hey, I wanna rent your house. And you're like, I've got four of 'em. Which one are you talking about? And kind of go through that motion.
[00:34:52] Mark: Yeah. Nice.
[00:34:53] Mark: And that is obviously where your, your sales skills, uh, you come into to come into house. So 170 odd dollars, that's about what? Just around about 15, 15, $16 a month? Is that about right? Yeah, we're just
[00:35:04] Jeff: about 15 a month.
[00:35:05] Mark: Wow. Fantastic. So go to furnish finder.com. Um, obviously this question is going to happen.
[00:35:11] Mark: Um, is this just for the US or are we further afield and do we have any plans to come, uh, further afield?
[00:35:16] Jeff: Yeah. The, the technology we inherited, uh, did not include any other languages or currency symbols. And so as we rebuild it, we are, um, adding language and currency. Uh, I would expect. Probably late next year we'll be moving into Canada with, you know, French Canadian, Canadian English, Canadian dollars.
[00:35:38] Jeff: And then from there, we'll, you know, see how far we get. But I would, I'd very much like to be, um, an international company, but I very much know how much harder and complex it is than being a US company and we're so early in the us That's the overwhelming focus.
[00:35:51] Mark: Yeah. Fantastic. Final, final question before I let you go.
[00:35:54] Mark: We really appreciate your time. Can ICAS be used to sync with a multi calendar?
[00:35:59] Jeff: We import VRBO and Airbnb calendars, we don't yet reverse, so we don't export our calendar. We only import, we had a lot of trouble with that at VRBO with the syncs. Breaking importing is very easy and given it's three or four bookings a year, we encourage people to just go block it off on Airbnb and import your calendars from whatever sets you're on.
[00:36:19] Jeff: We'll be adding more I cal imports, but, uh, most of the short term rentals are already on Airbnb, so we just encourage you to use the Airbnb. I cal import.
[00:36:26] Mark: Yeah. I feel like the, the, the main takeaway for this, especially if you are US based is, as Jeff said, it is as dangerous being a hundred percent Airbnb as it is just being a hundred percent VRBO or a hundred percent direct.
[00:36:38] Mark: You've got to have a very spread out revenue stream. It's just like any business that you start, doesn't matter what their category is. If we were doing, if I was a personal trainer and if I was speaking to Jeff and I said, yeah, all of my bookings, all of my leads, all of my customers come from this one Facebook group, Jeff would be like, you're crazy.
[00:36:56] Mark: You know? But you've gotta make sure that you've got to have a, a very even spread of revenue coming into your business, because at the end of the day. Whatever your aspirations are for your business, for your company. If, if you have aspiration to one day exit and sell it. Any sensible investor who would look at you and you say, I'm a hundred percent Airbnb, they'll just walk away because it's too much of a risk for them to do that.
[00:37:18] Mark: And even if you just wanna just spread your wings, add another revenue stream into your business. Literally less than like $15 a month is an absolute win-win, no brainer. Those of you that are in Canada, those of you in the UK and further fields, you know, just do some Google searches. If Furnish Finder obviously can't be available to you, go and see what other listing sites are available to you because again, just put in your place on somewhere.
[00:37:42] Mark: Even if just at the, the, the end of the day, it's another back link for Google to, to be able to find you on even better. Yeah. Go and do. So if
[00:37:51] Jeff: you're in the uk, use the UK portals, you know, you have a furnished place for rent. That's the same as the long-term real estate market, but you can charge more because it's furnished.
[00:37:59] Jeff: Absolutely,
[00:38:00] Mark: a hundred percent. Jeff, really, really appreciate this. I know you're busy with your time. Um, if anybody wants to, to find out more about what you put out there online, you drove a social media, but yeah, you, you put your, your words of wisdom on. We do most
[00:38:11] Jeff: of the stuff through Furnish Finder. So I'd encourage you to check out our YouTube channel.
[00:38:15] Jeff: We have a, uh, 160,000 member Facebook community. For people. Basically landlords exchanging ideas on what works, what doesn't with tenants in there. And so that's, uh, on Facebook. And then, yeah, I'd check out our podcasts.
[00:38:28] Mark: There you go. Landlord Diaries. There's an episode with me somewhere on there way back when, uh, we'll get you
[00:38:34] Jeff: back.
[00:38:34] Jeff: You've got a lot of new stuff to talk about.
[00:38:36] Mark: Absolutely. Hey, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I know people in the chat have absolutely loved this, so if you've tuned in, live with us and if you want to be part of more live audiences. You know where to go. Go to boost.co uk, leave your email address on there and you'll be part of one of these future live webinars if you're catching up on on the replay.
[00:38:54] Mark: Thank you very much for tuning in, makes you do all the good stuff, like subscribe and download and everything. Jeff. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for your time and thank you everybody for tuning in. Take care. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Boostly podcast. Bruce Lee. Let Bruce Lee 'cause it's so hard on the tea is loosely making up those rhymes.
[00:39:11] Mark: Don't write it, just do it Boostly.
