Top websites to list your midterm rental
April 24, 2024
Mid-term (or medium-term) rentals can be a great option if you have a spare room or place. They require a lot less work and maintenance than renting on a short-term basis through Airbnb or VRBO but they still yield a lot higher revenues compared to standard, year-long rentals.
Mid-term rentals are typically targeted towards specific occupations that require immediate housing during a time-frame, including traveling nurses, physical therapists, medical students or doctors on rotation, academics on sabbatical, and corporate remote workers.
Because this is a tailored niche, finding the best website to list your place is key to the success of a midterm landlord. Below are the sites that I’ve had the most success with. All these sites have a low listing fee and do not charge a percentage of rent, which saves you money and enables your to offer more competitive rates to renters. Each also tailors towards a certain demographic that I’ve felt like resulted in higher-quality tenants who were reliable and easy to deal with.
Furnished Finder
Furnished Finder is the largest site targeting the mid-term rental market. It started in 2014 geared towards traveling nurses but has since expanded to everyone. Furnished Finder has the largest number of users of any mid-term rental platform but also has the highest inventory or places, which means that if your place is able to stand out from the rest, then you’ll most likely be able to have a lot of success. However, as the site’s grown I’ve noticed that many of my messages sent to renters are not answered because of the competitiveness of the markets that I’m in.
Rotating Room
Rotating Room was started in 2009 as a site to provide housing to medical students on rotation and since then has expanded to the rest of the medical community. Unlike Furnished Finder, you must be a verified medical professional to send messages to landlords. Therefore, there’s less traffic on the site. However, they also have far fewer listings than on Furnished Finder so I found it less competitive to get people to rent my place on Rotating Room. I’ve also had great experience with tenants since most were medical students who were always busy with school. If you have housing near a hospital I recommend trying Rotating Room.
Sabbatical Homes
Sabbatical Homes was founded in 2000 and was started specifically to help professors find housing during their sabbaticals. This demo differs slightly from the traveling medical community. They’re typically later in their career and more likely to have a family, which means they prefer living in entire homes or larger apartments. In addition, most sabbaticals are 6 month or 1 year long in duration, so while they still require furnished housing, they often aren’t willing to pay as much on a monthly basis as traveling medical professionals who are on a shorter time frame. I found that Sabbatical Homes is a great option if your place is near a large university and you’re looking to rent your place for longer periods of time.
Med Housing
This is another mid-term rental site focused on the medical community. The main differentiator with Med Housing versus the other sites above is that Med Housing is primarily focused on the Canadian market, and overall seems to be a bit smaller than Furnished Finder and Rotating Room. Because I don’t have any places in Canada I haven’t had the opportunity to try them out yet, but I did want to mention this site for any Canadians out there reading this!