We’re giving mid-term travel its time to shine in this special guest interview about mid term rentals with Furnished Finder CEO and Founder, Brian Payne. Brian shares how travel and living have merged and the opportunity with mid term rentals.

We explore the lifestyle of mid-term travel, whether you’re your own boss, a remote worker, or travel as a part of your occupation. He also shares more on how to list your home or room for rent on Furnished Finder to build your travel fund. Brian and the squad discuss the benefits of renting mid-term over long or short, and tools to help you get started if you are considering starting.

Learn more about Furnished Finder at furnishedfinder.com and all their resources for mid term travelers and resources for mid term rental property owners.

Mid Term Rentals & How Travel & Living Have Merged – Episode Transcript

1 (2m 20s):
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Travel Squad Podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Brian Payne from Furnished Finder! Furnished Finder is a mid term rental platform for digital nomads, remote workers, traveling professionals, and even travelers who decide to extend their vacation into a lifestyle.

2 (2m 37s):
In this day and age, Travel and Living, Have Merged and Furnished Finder has Furnished Apartments, homes and rooms available to rent. So whether you’re a solo traveler or a traveler needing an entire place for your family, furnish Finder has you covered. In this week’s episode, we talk with Brian about how furnish Finder got started, the solution it brings to this modern lifestyle and how you can benefit as a renter or even an owner.

0 (3m 2s):
This was such a good conversation with Brian. We got into the perks of midterm rentals for travelers saving money on midterm rentals, which is so important. And like Jamal said, how to start generating travel funds from a room or a home that you own that you wanna start renting out for midterm leases. If you’ve ever been thinking about starting a side hustle like this in this space, then get your notepad ready because there are a ton of good tips in here. I wrote down so many notes and Brian references many resources that they have. So without further ado, let’s get into the interview with Brian.

0 (3m 44s):
Hello Brian and welcome to the Travel Squad Podcast.

6 (3m 47s):
Hey guys, happy to be here. Thank you.

0 (3m 50s):
We are so happy to have you too. You are the Founder and creator of Furnished Finder, this truly amazing Furnished rental platform. We’re thinking Airbnb but longer term specifically for remote workers, digital nomads and travelers who’ve kind of decided to extend their vacation into more of a lifestyle. And even those that may work in the travel healthcare field. It’s been around for quite some time and we know it’s growing in popularity. We’re hearing a lot more about it. So we’re really excited to have you here today and we wanna get into all the details on what it is and where it’s going. But before we jump into that, we wanna go all the way back to the beginning and hear what inspired you to bring this solution to life.

6 (4m 33s):
Yeah, well again, thanks for having me. Really happy to be here. Love what you guys are doing and yeah, travel is in a really unique state right now and we’re really happy to bring some Finder to, you know, your audience and, and digital nomads, remote workers, people who are just extending and wanna stay in one place for months at a time. You know, we definitely help with that. So, you know, where the idea from Furnace Finder got started was early on, my wife and I were, we were getting married at the time and we put her furnace condo up and we wanted to see, kind of judge the response to figure out who’s out there.

6 (5m 18s):
Is there a demand for furnace rentals? Obviously around that time, is it 20 10, 20 12 Airbnb is definitely gain gaining traction and we definitely knew that there was a market for short-term rentals, but the term mid-term rentals wasn’t really coined yet. So, but that’s what we were doing and that, so we fell into that to where, you know, maybe a, a travel healthcare tenant would stay with us for three months and, and that was pretty sweet because we, we all had W2 jobs at the time and so we were just, you know, hey let’s, let’s put in a travel nurse into this property. And then it just so happened that they kept renewing or, or the company would put in another, you know, worker right after that.

6 (6m 4s):
And then we worked with all different industries as well. And so essentially the idea for furnace Finder was born in that, hey, we can only own so many properties, right? But there’s a greater need. And we started to see not only in healthcare, but then all these other types of industries that, you know, the vacation rental market didn’t really fit what they were looking for. They’re looking for, you know, a 1, 2, 3 month day and maybe longer. Cuz we’re starting to see those lengths of staying long lengthened as well. But we just knew that the hey, the, the platform wasn’t there or wasn’t built, wasn’t available and vacation rentals didn’t really fit the need of travelers looking to stay, you know, for a few months at a time.

0 (6m 51s):
I love that it’s born organically and it’s evolved quite a bit since. So let’s fast forward from 2010 into present 2023. You mentioned that people are renting for longer. What length of stays are you seeing more of now?

6 (7m 6s):
Yeah, so now it’s a different approach. Obviously, you know, we’re in 2023 at the moment and we’re starting that leisure travel and work travel have Merged completely. So this is what we’re starting, what we’re seeing and and remote workers are here to stay and travelers like us are driving this. Workers like us are driving the industry and saying, look, we don’t have to be tied to a desk we’re or an office that we’re sitting in for five days a week. It just, things have changed and the new way to work is here. You know, we’re using technology right now and technology has changed.

6 (7m 48s):
The pandemic has changed our, our mindset on, hey, yes, we can be productive remotely. Right? So yeah, things have changed quite a bit in terms of how we live, how we work, how we socialize. And honestly, I mean the global industry of travel itself is just the profound implications just based on our mindset of, of travelers. So what we’re seeing in terms of length of stay is, is people are also choosing the new way to live. And there’s a lot of people are looking at it and looking at furnace Finder and going, well I could get a, you know, an unfurnished 12 month lease for let’s just say $2,000 a month, you know, just round number.

6 (8m 32s):
But for not much more I could have greater flexibility, a shorter lease term. And everything is already included in terms of utilities is already turned on. You don’t have to set those up and everything’s Furnished. So you move in, you have more flexibility to encourage our travel lifestyle, our habits. We love travel. My wife and I went to Patagonia earlier this year and it was just absolutely fantastic. Like it was, it was something for me that was just magical and something that I’d wanted to do for a long, long time. So we were able to make that happen because of, you know, the remote lifestyle. We, we definitely worked a little bit here and there.

6 (9m 14s):
But yeah, it’s just things have changed and Merged and people are looking to stay in places longer. So anywhere from three to six months now where basically it was before kind of you’re just tacking on a, you know, a few days on a work trip on the front end, on the back backend, it’s now going, you know, people are going, well we can live in one area of the country for three, six months and we can live in three to six months in another area of the country. So yeah, people are just thinking about living differently on this side of the pandemic in 2023.

2 (9m 50s):
Well I know you used that coined term mid term rentals and he said, you know, it’s not quite there. So you gave us a little bit of distinguishing factors between the more common Airbnb that people know about. Right. Short term you could rent even just one day, for example. So for you guys with Furnished Finder, give our listeners an idea in terms of length of time. I mean, can you book by the day I, or is it week or is it month and beyond and month and a half. So that way people can get an idea of if they want to do that remote and I only wanna be here one month, do I need to be there three months? Cause you use that as an example, so,

6 (10m 27s):
Sure. So it really depends on, on the property we have about 250,000 properties on the map. Now these are our own properties that these are landlords or, or real estate investors, property managers that have listed on furnish Finder for the specific purpose of renting to travelers. Typically our platform is around monthly, but you can absolutely find properties on there that dabble in nightly or weekly as well, you know, so we’re definitely longer term than than Airbnb. However, it is a thing to where you’re able to go on, you’re able to find properties and you’re able to connect directly.

6 (11m 7s):
And the best part is you’re not paying booking fees, right? So the booking fees are, are a sticking point. It’s always been with me, I’d always try to go around booking fees platforms if I could. And sometimes you just go, well this place is worth it, right? And you, and you pay. But if you’re able to find that property manager and book direct, we would always do that. And that’s what Furnish Finder does. It allows landlords to connect with the travelers, but for on the traveler side, there are no booking fees that you’re paying the platform. How

0 (11m 36s):
About cleaning fees? I know that’s a big point of contention with Airbnb right now. Yeah,

6 (11m 42s):
I mean, cleaning fees are fairly expected, especially in monthly rentals. So yeah, you should probably expect a average cleaning fee and

0 (11m 51s):
I think that’s more reasonable too from, you know, a, a two month rental than a two day rental

6 (11m 57s):
For sure. I mean honestly, you’re dealing with two different types of tenant types, right? So on the two, let’s say the four night rental you’re dealing, you could be dealing with vacationers and frankly partiers. So it can absolutely go, oh gosh, in four days, holy smokes, trash is overflowing, you know, we’ve got a broken lamp, we’ve got a, you know, this, there’s stuff on the wall like, oh gosh, what happened in here? And monthly travelers, they’re there for a reason, they’re there to work or they’re there for another reason and they’re, it’s typically a different type of tenant. So I get the whole cleaning fee after a, you know, a party weekend. And I’d argue that monthly travelers take better care of a property than vacationer.

0 (12m 41s):
Absolutely. You mentioned 250,000 properties, are those all in the us?

6 (12m 46s):
Yeah, right now we’re a US platform furnace Finder is growing and will be in three other countries in probably the next 12 months or less. But yes, there’s a great need worldwide for monthly Furnished rentals and like hotels are, are using property, big property managers, apartment complexes are using us and even down to, you know, real estate investors using Airbnb that really understand their market are definitely using furnish finders.

0 (13m 16s):
You teased out three new locations. Is there any way you could give us a sneak peak into what those countries might be?

6 (13m 22s):
Yeah, so we will be heading into Canada, UK, and Mexico. Very nice is our focus. And there’s just so much more, like with digital nomad, you’re, you’re getting a lot of countries and regulators that are, you know, pushing for more of that digital nomad lifestyle. And yeah, I mean some are even in the European area that they’re really looking for that kind of a, a larger area based digital nomad visa. So that’s really interesting to us as a company. And I think there’s also a lot of companies that are really kind of working towards using us in addition to their normal season.

6 (14m 3s):
So say Airbnb, you have a lot of airbnbers. It could be property managers, it could be apartment complexes that are working on working towards the targeting travelers and they really understand the area, but they use furnish Finder in a way that really helps them during their slow season. Well, lots of people, lot of the property managers are really targeting the midterm rental tenant as a, as a new business strategy as well. And that’s what we are as, as travelers we’re that midterm rental space. And back to your point about length of stay, it could be, it could very well be a few weeks, but I typically it’s a month, three months, even six months.

0 (14m 44s):
Going back to what you said about the progression of the pandemic and how people are evolving their work life, travel life lifestyles. I really do resonate with that a lot. As a remote worker that was forced into this lifestyle because of the pandemic and never looked back. You have to start building trust a little bit. You get comfortable working from home and then you get comfortable working from the pool. And then I took a week and went to go visit my grandparents and worked from their dining room table for a week. And that was such an amazing experience. But you realize you can socialize with family while working, you could lay by the pool while working. And so I feel like you’re right in that space where people are getting comfortable where they’re maybe now ready to test the waters for two weeks in a destination.

0 (15m 29s):
Can I work on vacation and then Right. Can I work from maybe down the road, another country for a month or move to other countries? Yeah. Question for you on this though, coming in on the other side of things, you start to hear reports of companies who are cracking down, in my opinion, unnecessarily so on workers who aren’t in their home base.

6 (15m 51s):
Yeah, it’s a great point and we know that, that companies are, are really trying to do the back to office thing. Earlier on I mentioned that the power is in the worker. Yeah, right. The power is in is in the traveler and the smart companies are realizing in my opinion that, you know, work has changed, you know, and you could definitely try to, you know, put the GE back in the bottle, but I don’t think it’s happening and I think the smart companies are gonna realize it and embrace the, the travel lifestyle really make that part of their company culture one way or another. Oh,

0 (16m 25s):
I know, we, I love that. I am in full support of that and it’s companies like yours that are gonna help give more power to the people.

6 (16m 33s):
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, employment has been up and down, I know in tech and in in other industries as well to where, you know, there’s an expectation that I’ll be working remotely and I will be productive because I’ve proven myself as a worker to be productive and I can do it remotely. And frankly it’s a non-starter if, if this is a non remote job. Of course there’s some travel, of course there’s some onsite meetings, things like that. But primarily I think workers are expecting to have primarily a, a remote type of position. Yeah, not everywhere, but that’s changing.

6 (17m 13s):
I mean, there was a, the chief commercial officer from American Airlines was talking about the difference in, and this is a recent gift article, like historically about 2020 5% of the, of their trips were kind of blended like business and travel. And that has, is now over 50% of every flight of American airlines is that blended travel. So it’s happening right in front of us and it’s not just, you know, a few companies or you know, a a small industry saying, no, we wanna stay remote. It’s sending shock waves through the travel industry and I think the, the smart companies will embrace it.

6 (17m 58s):
Yeah,

0 (17m 59s):
I I totally agree with that. So for someone that might be interested in the midterm rental, maybe they wanna explore a couple destinations over the next year when they’re looking at Airbnb possibly. And then Furnished Finder, we’ve talked about some of the fees and those are some of the perks from the, the house rental perspective. Are there any additional perks people should know about when renting with Furnished Finder?

6 (18m 22s):
I mean it’s about that flexibility lifestyle, right? It, the flexibility is the, the most important amenity for any property. I believe, especially in the younger generation of workers, they expect that flexibility. And yes, you could be tied down to a 12 month lease where you need to go and turn the electricity on and and pay for garbage and then you’ve gotta go buy couple TVs, couple couches, couple beds and all of that. And then well, what if you want to go to Greece for three months, then you gotta put that stuff in storage. Like it’s no longer that we’re, you know, tethered to our stuff. That’s the way our parents rented. You know, this is a different era, this is a different time. We’re thinking differently in that, look, we could just pop into a, a monthly furnace rental on furnish Finder, you’re good for three, six months, 12 months.

6 (19m 10s):
Like landlords want, you know, people to stay there for longer periods of time. And then you can go, okay, you know, come, you know, August I’m gonna eject and I’m gonna go here for three months and then I’m gonna come back and find another rental. Like the li our lifestyle is changing and in the terms of funding this travel lifestyle, I do wanna recommend or, or at least talk about the opportunity of, of becoming a landlord. Like, I don’t know if, if people have thought about it, I don’t know if you guys have thought maybe you already are, but what people are doing in our world of midterm rentals, that’s the term we coined and started this industry. We, we actually have a midterm rental summit that, that we just had our first in-person meeting in San Diego, which is widely successful.

6 (19m 56s):
And what people are doing is they’re, they’re either renting properties they already own or they’re putting a property under lease, they’re furnishing it and they’re renting it to travelers at a higher price called, you know, it’s a arbitrage model. Either way we have to fund our travel habit somehow, right? Like it, you know, oh yeah. Being a a world traveler, it doesn’t come deep. And I, in addition to the money, you need that freedom in order to take a couple weeks, a couple months off. That’s the hard part is that, is that freedom, right? So think this, think of, you know, furnish Finder as a vehicle for you as a traveler to consider, well maybe this is my vehicle to fund this travel lifestyle.

6 (20m 41s):
So you can become a landlord on Furnished. It’s very, very easy to do. We have tons of resources to help new landlords just like you to, to rent out either a room, it could be maybe you buy a, a condo or maybe you lease an apartment and then, you know, with the proper, just make sure you’re upfront about what your intentions are to the, to the apartment complex. But you’re able to get a lease, put furniture in it, and then, you know, rent it out to at a higher price and you’re making four, six, $800,000 a month on one unit. And, and people do this to the tune of, you know, hundreds of units. Like the midterm rental space is here to stay and it’s got legs.

6 (21m 26s):
It’s the darling of the real estate industry right now. So real estate investors are buying property specifically to rent to monthly travelers. Like you guys, you can absolutely make money, make that recurring income to fund this lifestyle as well on furnish Finder here.

1 (21m 47s):
Yeah, last night as I was actually prepping for this interview, I was taking a look at some of the properties on furnish Finder and there’s actually four rentals in the condo community that I live in that we currently Oh, is that right? And so Jamal and I, last night we were talking about, well we have an extra bedroom, we could absolutely rent our extra bedroom on furnish Finder. It’s not a long term commitment, you know, they’re probably gonna be there 1, 2, 3 months. Right. And then you’re not having to commit a whole year to having someone as a roommate essentially.

6 (22m 18s):
Exactly. They’re traveler. So they’re coming, yeah, like a couple months and then you get your place back and that’s just renting a room. I mean, what if you save some money and, and get a one bedroom or a two bedroom or something like that. There was a article in Fortune yesterday where we were mentioned where this girl, Jennifer Ramsey, she’s 23 years old and she bought, she bought a house in Cincinnati and she’s making four, 500 bucks a month specifically just by furnishing it and she put it on furnish Finder. So she’s one of our customers and she’s, her goal is to make enough money to be able to buy a multifamily.

6 (22m 58s):
So she wants to maybe buy a duplex or a fourplex and then she, she wants to live in one and then rent the other one or other three, let’s, depending if it’s a duplex or fourplex. And then essentially everybody who’s paying her rent is, or everybody, yeah, everyone’s paying her rent is paying her mortgage and then she’s making money on top. So eventually you’re gonna earn money not only on the, the revenue but also on, you know, the appreciation of that, of the, the asset. So essentially the earlier you, you start, you know, getting into this and you can absolutely kind of trade up to property types and each and the higher, the higher you go, the more rents you’re gonna make and then the more freedom you’re gonna have.

6 (23m 44s):
Yeah. And

2 (23m 45s):
You know, Brittany had mentioned what we were looking for that extra room, but of course I wanna make sure everybody who’s listening knows that there’s fully Furnished independent. You could get your own place, but you can see sometimes just rooms listed on there. But Kim asked a little bit ago, and I kind of want to touch on this, she kind of asked for like a distinguishing factor between ver finer and Airbnb and you touched upon it, but I feel like a lot of our conversation too has been really on remote workers, but we really haven’t touched upon travelers too, of people like, I just want to live here or be here for a month or two, then going to the next spot. And I think one of those distinguishing factors maybe that we haven’t touched upon, and you could maybe inform us on this, of course, like a platform like Airbnb is more catered to like daily rentals and daily, if you’re staying there for a month, is definitely gonna add up the rents and prices that I saw on your guys’ platform are more aligned with what true rents would actually be.

2 (24m 43s):
So I feel like people would actually save a lot more money. And this is also something great for travelers who want to stay remote work or not in a place for a month two before they move on versus a hotel or Airbnb where they’ll be charged a lot more on a daily rate.

6 (24m 59s):
Yeah, no, I mean you absolutely nailed it. There’s tons of other traveler types that are looking, you know, for monthly Furnished rentals and it’s not just a, a vacationer, it could be a family that’s going to a relocation, maybe they buy a house, sell a house, maybe they’re redoing their house and it’s just gonna take three months and they’re gonna tear everything up. They don’t wanna live and breed it all the dust, so they’re gonna, you know, pop into a furnace Finder for three months. But on the traveler side, like, you know, yet tons of business travelers use us. But with the difference between furnace, Finder and Airbnb, it’s more of a direct model. So you’re gonna go directly allow you the tenant to go direct to the landlord and that is really appreciated.

6 (25m 44s):
I think a lot of the travelers like that, they, they get to know who they’re renting from. It’s not just an online book necessarily. A longer term tenant kind of may come with, with like a tenant screening report or, or a lease. So I would expect maybe some sort of a lease. But again, back to that flexibility, it’s probably very, well could be a month to month lease. So all you need to do is provide 30 days notice and you have that flexibility to pick up and head to that other side of the country or wherever you would like to go. But yeah, we take a different approach. We, we use Airbnb, we love Airbnb and Airbnb as a partner.

6 (26m 26s):
Oh, wonderful. Yeah, yeah. New partnership. Not too many people know about it, not public right now, but they’re absolutely a, a partner. We’re looking towards a partnership with them and they, they have their model, we have our model ultimately, again, since travel and leisure have and business have Merged, all types of inventory are being consumed across the board.

0 (26m 50s):
You are really starting to peak my interest on the business opportunity side of things. I recently started renting my car out on Turo cuz I’m one of those Oh yeah, I’m not using it too much. So I’m making a few hundred bucks a month just by doing nothing. So I’m definitely interested in this. You mentioned earlier you have tons of resources for people that are interested in potentially renting their home or their rooms. You mentioned a summit. What other types of resources can people find on your site or through the summit? Yeah, I

6 (27m 20s):
Mean you could get, you could download the, the new landlord guide that get kind of soup to nuts get you started. If you’re like, if you’re just looking into this going, I didn’t think about this, I could rent my room, I can, I could rent my, you know, my back house, my basement, my above garage unit. I could rent, you know, all of these things. Maybe you just go, look, I, I want a handful of units. Like I, I really see a path to this freedom to fund my, my travel lifestyle. Well this is, this is exactly what, what you can do. This is, there’s tons of people that do that. So yeah, it’s really fun. It’s unique. It’s, I know we’re in a high higher interest rate time, but that should not stop you because ultimately you can still get qualified and it doesn’t have to be, you know, a beachfront condo or a beach, you know, beachfront mansion.

6 (28m 12s):
Like this could, you could just find a, a one bedroom or two bedroom, one bath, something like that to where, you know, it’s manageable for you and you can get started in this and you can, you can make that monthly income that you need. And you know, I know a ton of our landlords also douro to the travelers that stay with it. Oh wow. So, you know, it’s kind of a, a double double whammy. Yeah,

0 (28m 38s):
That’s awesome. Thinking about tips for those who wanna get their home on your platform, would you say there’s any benefit in a location? You mentioned it doesn’t have to be beachfront, right? So if you’re appealing to the traveler and if you’re thinking about purchasing, should you think about where a traveler might wanna stay or where a traveling nurse might wanna stay and, and that could help get you more rentals or get you a more competitive price?

6 (29m 5s):
Yeah, I mean I would start where you are. Like, what I would recommend is go to the furnish, find your map type in your area and then you can kind of get an idea of what is out there. You can also, if you, on the homepage, you can scroll down and you can look at the demand for an area too. So maybe you’re thinking, well I’m, I could, I could list this property or I can go other different areas. You can go through and get statistics on different areas that you’re interested in. And, and that’s right on the, on the homepage as well. So yeah, we’ll give you that kind of information that you need to make that decision. Yeah,

1 (29m 41s):
I was looking through your website and it looks like you guys do have a lot of resources. One thing that you had mentioned is that all of your renters connect directly to the property owners or whoever’s managing it. So in terms of customer service, if there’s something wrong, let’s say they reach out, they connect, they agree on a property and lease sign and then they go to the home and it’s not what they were expecting. What types of customer service do you guys provide, if any at all?

6 (30m 10s):
Yeah, I mean we have customer service about, you know, about hundred and 50 people dedicated 25 of us, well seven days a week. But the, the lease, I mean what we’re doing in our platform really connects the landlord and the travelers. So, you know, we obviously we have reviews there so the traveler can make that best decision and then, but ultimately, you know, you are working directly with the landlord, so absolutely check the reviews. Now keep in mind that every landlord that lifts on furnish, Finder goes through and must pass a personal verification background check.

6 (30m 51s):
So that’s good. They’re, we’re making sure that they truly are who they say they are, you know, so there is a comfort level when you’re, you know, booking through furnace Finder, but keep in mind you are working directly with that landlord, so you know, we’re not involved in that transaction otherwise then we have to start charging booking fees and, and all of that, right? And it gets really expensive for the traveler. So we provide a lot of tools. So you can connect, you can, you know, you can touch base, you can message, you get reviews. And the benefit of knowing that every traveler, ev every landlord enable to, before they lift and before their property’s actually viewable on the map, they’ve gotta pass a, you know, a pretty intense verification screen.

6 (31m 38s):
But ultimately you’re working directly with the landlord. And I mentioned earlier you should, you know, many landlords will request a tenant screening report. There will probably be a lease, even though it is, it could be month-to-month lease. There would be a little bit more involved in as a tenant as then just rather, you know, putting in a credit card and booking cuz you know, a landlord may want to know who you are, what you’re doing and make sure you are who you say you are as well. Verify income, things like that, you know, as if you’re staying longer. Then it gets into a little bit more of a traditional rental where the landlord wants to know who the, who the tenants are.

6 (32m 19s):
So yeah, you can expect that, but it’s a very easy process for sure.

0 (32m 23s):
How long would you say someone should give themselves the time for, for booking if they were looking to rent? Is a week Okay. Or a little

6 (32m 32s):
Bit, yeah, honestly we did a lot of work and in the background or my, the slide deck for that MTR summit if equal like about, you know, 20%, 20%, 20% or a little bit more of one to two weeks and then two to four weeks and then four to six weeks. So anytime between two to six weeks is usually the, the hotspot. But you can go in and type your date and you can look further out and, and if it’s a short term type of thing, like, gosh, I got to like, you know what you were talking about earlier, Whitney, I got to a place I booked on another platform wasn’t what I wanted.

6 (33m 11s):
And, or I’m at a hotel now and this is, you know, I don’t wanna stay here in a hotel for that long of a period. I’d rather have more of a, you know, a, a condo, a Furnished rental that I, it can have my own space type of a thing than you. You come to furnish Finder and get, get that here.

0 (33m 30s):
I’m excited to use it. You’re inspiring me to take a monthlong trip now. Yeah,

6 (33m 35s):
I mean we’re opening it up. You guys have that option and you know, I think Jamal mentioned it earlier, the price difference between booking an unfurnished 12 month rental, which locks you in for a whole year and then you’ve gotta buy all this stuff and, and set up utility. There’s not much difference in price on our platform in other platforms, you know, they’re adding booking fees, they’re adding hundreds of dollars to the rent because they’re managing things. You know, you’re going to see what the, the rents you see on furnish Finder are direct. Like we are not marking that rent up at all. We’re not taking a piece of that this much inventory and to have the prices that you have, it’s like going and buying wholesale.

6 (34m 20s):
You’re going direct, there’s no markup like, like corporate housing or anything like that. Like even apartment complexes, even if you wanna get a three month lease and, and get into an apartment complex, they’re gonna go, yeah, well we could do that, but then you need to get furniture rental, which another, let’s say 600 bucks on top of the rent. So when you come to furnish Finder, it’s all included, it’s all there.

0 (34m 42s):
I think another type of traveler that could use the service is someone that’s moving to another destination. Just thinking about my own experience a year ago, moving halfway across the country, it’s a big move and you don’t know the neighborhoods, so you’re making your best guess on where to live. And then furnishing it is just a whole other thing to take on so much work. So I could see someone who’s interested in moving to another city, testing out a place for two months and then another neighborhood for two months to see where they ultimately wanna rent or buy even.

6 (35m 13s):
Yeah, I think it’s absolutely smart. That’s what we did. We, my family and I moved, we rented to go and take a look at an area and then we had another opportunity to use Bern Finder when we, I mentioned it before, but when we, we bought a, we finally bought a house and then we had to renovate the whole thing. So, you know, we, we didn’t live here, bought it in let’s say what March. So you didn’t move until, you know, know September. So we were in, we were in a Furnished Finder for, for that pretty much that, that period of time and it worked out great. So yeah, whatever the situation is, you know, whether you’re a traveler, whether you’re a business traveler, where you’re bolting on a, you know, some time on a work trip, you want to get your, get some boots on the ground to explore different neighborhoods, to figure out where you go before you maybe purchase a house or, or get into a longer term situation, whatever the situation, tons of inventory to choose from and yeah, it’s a really unique time for us as travelers that kind of witness what’s happening.

6 (36m 14s):
Yeah.

1 (36m 14s):
So you had mentioned that part of the perks is there’s no booking fees for the traveler, the renter. So what type of fee is there for the backend for the person that is listing the property on the website?

6 (36m 27s):
Yeah, I mean part of the reason we have so many listings is we keep that very inexpensive as well. So say you are a landlord and you have a place, it could be a room and again, it could be a condo, it could be a small house, you know, whatever you have. So it’s basic, it’s $99 to list your property. So what we’ve done is, you know, we’ve kept the bar really low. Booking fees. If you book a place on Airbnb for two nights or three nights, you’re gonna pay more than $99 in a booking fee. $99 is good for 12 months. So we’re going to be providing the, the landlord with, with the tenant leads as they come in the interest, you know, you can, the tenants can reach out to them directly and then they can, you know, continue through that, that process.

6 (37m 11s):
But yeah, ultimately pretty, pretty unique situation that works really well for, for travelers because again, there are no booking fees and on the landlord’s side, we keep the price so low on, and then we also have like, then we have all the other tools that they need. So if you’re thinking, okay, well I, own me the first thing about being a landlord, what do I do? Like what do I do once I find a tenant? We have already have all of that there for you. So another company that we built and connected to British Finders called KeyJack and Keek is a landlord tools platform that provides the landlord with everything they need in order to secure a tenant.

6 (37m 53s):
So it could be tenant screening, it could be a custom lease for your state, it could be online rent, payment, insurance type of product. All of that is there for you as well. So, yep, in short, quick approach is, you know, no booking fees on the front end for the traveler, low hurdle to entry for the, for the landlord and then, you know, optional tools in order to secure your tenant on the back end.

0 (38m 20s):
That’s amazing. You, you do make it really easy and, and that’s really reassuring for someone that hasn’t done it before.

6 (38m 27s):
We do try and it should, it should be all there for you guys. If, if you’re interested, and I’m glad I peaked your interest, I know, you know, we’re all travelers and we wanna kind of figure out how can we travel longer and how can we travel more. If this is a good opportunity to either a, provide op, provide inventory for you to, to live in for whatever your situation or if it will help you, you know, fund your lifestyle, get that recurring revenue by renting to fellow travelers, you may want to check that out too. But we, we hope to help and I sure do appreciate the, you know, the opportunity to come on and talk

0 (39m 6s):
To guys today. Absolutely. I’m seeing a ton of content about this on TikTok. I feel like if you guys aren’t on TikTok, you have to get on there. It will just blow up with interest.

6 (39m 17s):
It’s happening truly, a lot of the stuff we see is organic and it’s so many people are, are really adopting this lifestyle is really, they’re choosing to rent Furnished over unfurnished. Yeah, it’s really unique. I mean, and in regards to TikTok and some of the, the folks, I mean it could be maybe landlords are, are really vocal on TikTok saying, Hey, this is how much I’m making. Yeah. You know, check out Jesse Vasquez, he’s, he’s a midterm rental specialist, he’s a landlord. I think he’s got 25 properties or so, and he’s, he’s, you know, to replace his income. We were both in, in the medical device sales industry a while back, but he’s replaced his income and then some that’s, but he has a passion to teach this, right?

6 (40m 6s):
So anyway, yeah, there’s just, there’s a groundswell of interest I mentioned in this the midterm rental space. You know, traditionally if you’re a real estate investor, you, you would do, you know, a traditional 12 month lease unfurnished lease, right? And now obviously Airbnb, you’ve got that short term space. Well obviously right in the middle you, it’s still Furnished you’re still getting maybe one and a half x on your, on the, the rent opportunity that you can get. Maybe not quite as high as a short term rental, but absolutely you’re, you know, you’re probably doubling what you can get compared to a traditional unfurnished rental.

1 (40m 46s):
And although it is less than you would for a short term rental, there’s not as much turnover. There’s

6 (40m 51s):
Well that’s a very good point.

1 (40m 52s):
And not as much wear and tear on the house. People are in it coming and trashing your house because there’s typically a respectable professionals working, so you’re not having to replace all of the items as consistently if you were doing a short term

6 (41m 6s):
Yeah, no, you, that was, that was perfect. That’s exactly why as landlords, that’s why we were going after the traveling professionals up to time to where it was, it just made sense for us, less turnover. We didn’t wanna run our place like a hotel and frankly we didn’t have time to do it, so we just said, well, let’s just focus on these traveling professionals. And then once we built the platform, it grew and grew and grew and, and here we are today in 2023, witnessing a global paradigm shift on how we live and travel and all those kind of silos where before it was like, Nope, I you’re in corporate housing or nope, you’re, you’re a business traveler or nope, you are on vacation, it’s all coming together and we’re witnessing it right now.

0 (41m 56s):
You said time and that is a key word for me. I’m thinking time too. Do you see any travel agents looking on furnish, Finder and booking for people who are doing those midterm soons? Yeah,

6 (42m 9s):
We call ’em travel managers, but yes, 100%. And we do partner with a lot of them, but we just get, we do get a lot of people that are booking travel, maybe like travel travel manager, could be for a corporation, it could be for a company and their booking travel for their employees or their booking travel for their clients. But yes, indeed, we get that a lot. What you can do is, what they do is that they can, you can come to the map, you can either put in a houser request to where you, you, you know, fill out a small form, say, here, here’s where I’m going. And then landlord can look at it and go, okay, this might be a good fit.

6 (42m 49s):
And they’ll reach out to you directly and then you just start, you know, kind of going through your prospects of properties and going, oh, well this one looks really nice and you know, I’m gonna pursue these three. So it’s a good way to start. Or you can just kind of plug into the map itself. You can put in your search date or you can and your area if you know your search date or you can just, you know, omit the search date and just put in the area and you kind of see everything that’s out there.

2 (43m 16s):
Well, I really love the platform in general just talking about it with you here. Of course, we knew about it beforehand just as well looking on our own. But I feel like it’s a platform where everybody can really benefit whether you are that that traveling nurse or traveling worker need to be, you know, somewhere. So it doesn’t make sense for you to have a stable home if you’re just a casual traveler, longtime traveler. But we even talked about the entrepreneurial aspect of it as being an owner. And I think along with the cultural shift that has allowed people to, you know, live different places and work different places for travel. Of course that has also brought on the more entrepreneurial mindset of individuals.

2 (43m 56s):
So I think everybody can really benefit from your platform if it’s something that they want to do. And I know we touched on a lot, but is there anything else that you want to tell our listener and our audience that we haven’t maybe touched upon quite yet?

6 (44m 9s):
I mean, not specifically other than, yeah, come check us out, compare our inventory against, you know, maybe a traditional rental or a short term rental and, and I think you’ll see something unique. I think you, you’ll see something special and we’re, we’re really kind of changing the game when it comes to, you know, monthly Furnished rentals and how to, how to think about them and how to use them. Where before a lot of times it was in a black box and it was only corporate housing and they would control everything. We’ve kind of opened that up to, to everybody. So yeah, come and compare and take a look. We do have a lot of resources for travelers, we have a lot of resources for, for landlords and just have fun, be safe out there when it comes to, to travel and gosh, if we can, if we can help take a look and we’ll, we’ll be there.

6 (45m 2s):
The only other thing I was gonna mention is we do have a podcast called Landlord Diary. So if you’re interested in, in this lifestyle, if you’re interested in funding the travel lifestyle through real estate, take a look at the Landlord Diaries. We’re we’re telling stories from furnish Finder landlords that are doing very well that maybe you kind of hear about their story and everybody starts somewhere, you know, just like this, the, the Fortune article, you know, she, she started when she’s 23 years old or 24 years old, everybody starts somewhere with one unit, right? And where will this take you? What, what type of life lifestyle can it provide?

6 (45m 42s):
So take a look at the landlord diary on Spotify or wherever and maybe they inspire you to, to get started on this journey.

0 (45m 51s):
Well, you have a new subscriber out of me. I’m gonna, I’m definitely gonna go listen and we’ll link to that podcast in our show notes and the resources that you mentioned. The Landlord guide will link to all of that, so it’s easy for everyone listening to access it. That’s

6 (46m 3s):
Fantastic.

2 (46m 4s):
And as we’re kind of closing out here, of course we’ve mentioned Furnish Finder, they know the name, but tell us the specific website so everyone knows where to go, whether you’re looking to rent or actually become a landlord yourself.

6 (46m 16s):
Yep. It is furnish Finder dot com. So furnish past tense Finder singular.com. Even if you do put it as at the end, it’ll still get to us. So, but yeah, furnace Finder dot com we’re here and we we’re just excited to kind of engage in this community of, you know, again, 250,000 landlords over one and a half million travelers on our site every month.

0 (46m 42s):
That’s so impressive. And we’re excited to see where you go in the future. We’ll be hopefully future tenants, future landlords, and, and we’ll be right there along with your success.

6 (46m 52s):
And we wanna hear your story on Landlord Diaries too, so,

0 (46m 56s):
Oh, we can’t wait to be a, a podcast guest on there. There you go. Thank you Brian, so much for coming on today.

6 (47m 4s):
All right. Appreciate it guys. Safe travels everybody. Thanks

2 (47m 7s):
For having Thank you Brian.

0 (47m 9s):
Thank you Scotties for tuning into our episode this week with Brian to keep the adventures going with us. Please be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok YouTube at Travel Squad Podcast, and send us in your questions of the

2 (47m 20s):
Week. If you found the information in this episode to be useful or if you thought we were just plain funny, please be sure to share it with a friend that would enjoy it too. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast and tune in every travel Tuesday for new episodes.

1 (47m 35s):
Stay tuned for next week’s episode. We have some more amazing adventures and tips in store for you.

2 (47m 40s):
Bye Squadies

1 (47m 41s):
See you, Squadies!