Mastering Midterm Rentals Strategies for Disaster Relief Housing w/ Insurance for Displaced Families

We're going to have a really good session today, all about midterm rentals and insurance claims. We have a special guest on today, so it's really exciting.

So that's great if they're getting the replay. We knew that there was not going to be any time that worked for everybody. We are super glad to have everybody here. And I think we should just go ahead and jump in because we have a very packed agenda and we want to get to everything and we want to leave ample time for questions and answers. So I'll go over. A couple of things real quick. Let me, first of all, introduce our speakers. I'm Bonnie Lowe. I'm a real estate investor. I happen to be a host with a cabin in Lake Lure, North Carolina, which thankfully was not damaged during the hurricane, but I was there during the hurricane. And so I saw firsthand the devastation to the area. And really just wanted to be able to offer some support in some way. And because I'm in a lot of local groups, I have seen again and again, a mismatch between supply and demand relative to the hurricane response. There are a lot of people obviously who are needing housing, and there are a lot of hosts who want to offer their housing, but they're not quite sure how to do it under the circumstances. A lot of times it's short-term rental vacation hosts who are used to fairly simple automated process, like using Airbnb's platform, for example, and really are not certain how to go about pivoting to midterm rentals where you want to put a little more protections in place. And it's probably a little more manual process for a lot of people. And so just seeing that and also seeing people saying, I'm desperately seeking for how housing, even if it's a 2 or 3-hour drive, just realizing that there was a gap between that supply and demand. And so I reached out to a couple of my favorite colleagues here and said, I think that we can help in some way by pulling this webinar together.

That's what we've got for you today.

I'm the host of the MTR Connect, which is a weekly virtual meetup for midterm rentals. And we do a lot of direct support for one another, problem solving, troubleshooting, sharing resources. So doing this kind of meeting today is what we do anyway. We just decided to expand the format and open it up to more people. We've got Shona Lepus here. She is the host of the She's Not Asking podcast, which is super exciting. Recommend you check that out if you're interested in midterms. She's also a very seasoned midterm host herself and a specialist in the insurance placement arena, which is very much relevant to what we're going to talk about here today. Then I've got John Wolfe as well. John is a friend and colleague of mine. He is the founder of MiniStays, which is a platform for midterm rentals. And I wanted to share with you what he is doing. I love his company and what they're doing. And not only do they have a great product out there for you to list your property. And that's the number one question I'm getting from people is where do I list a midterm rental? He also has a nonprofit arm of his company that is supporting the hurricane relief. Very relevant to, to what we're doing and all of the things that we're dealing with boots on the ground. So I asked John to join us today as well, and we'll hear from him and see a little demo of what they're working on. Just a couple of housekeeping items. Shona is the meeting owner. And so she's got the ultimate control of cameras and slides.

And so I'll be speaking first.

And I know she's going to monitor the chat while I'm speaking.

I will monitor the chat while she's speaking, but we're going to ask that everybody hold their questions for later on.

So that we can do a Q&A session towards the end. The last half hour will be Q&A.

But if you have a question and you're not going to be able to be here in the latter half of the meeting, please feel free to go ahead and put it in the chat and we'll try to pick up that question. We'll get a replay of this event so that you get all the material.

And if you have to leave for some reason, you'll be able to listen to the recording later on as well. And so then that's where we'll answer your questions in the chat if we're not able to do it live. Somebody is saying your volume is going in and out.

And just a quick reminder, if you have questions, just type them in the chat. We'll get to them at the end. We want to make sure we can get through all the content, but please post your questions as you think of them so you don't forget.

Yeah. And feel free to use the reactions emojis as we're speaking. We always love to get feedback. You can do thumbs up, you can do a heart, you can do celebration, whatever. It's really nice for speakers to get feedback. So I really encourage that you be interactive during this. So, um, I'm going to cover just real quick, what is a midterm or medium-term rental? They're the same thing. Um, some people say midterm, some people say medium, some say MTR, but the bottom line is it's a hybrid between long-term and short-term rentals, but they're always furnished and they typically are going to be 30 plus-day stays. I, that's not a hard and fast rule, but just think of them as longer than your typical 1 to 2 week short-term vacation rental. And one of the reasons we call out 30-plus-day stays is that in some jurisdictions, they do have very specific rules once you get above 30-day stays and your insurance company might as well. And so that's why We call out 30+ day stays specifically. In most situations, and there are going to be some things that we talk about here today, and I'll try to call them out. I'll try to remind myself to call them out. I'm so used to talking about midterm rentals in general, and I really want to tailor this conversation specifically to the disaster relief experience. But this last bullet point here, usually more of a hospitality experience, is really key in MTR. When you have a long-term rental, you're just pretty much renting it out. It's empty and people are turning it into their own home. They don't expect any hospitality type service from the host in most cases, whereas the short-term rental is all about the hospitality experience.

Midterms are a little different because typically people are going to expect more of the hospitality experience.

They're looking for the nicer amenities, of course, furnished property. They may be looking for, uh, color supplies that you would normally stock in your house.

And we'll talk about what those are.

They're going to want recommendations for your favorite coffee shop and restaurants and those types of things you would typically associate with hosting a short-term rental. I think if you can provide that under the circumstances All of that is great. And if you're already an STR host, you're set up to do that. So no problem. But because this is a disaster response and people are first and foremost looking for shelter, I would say that if you're looking to get up and running quickly, the hospitality experience is less important under the circumstances, but typically would be a key feature of hosting a midterm. What type of property is suitable for an MTR? Under, again, Under the circumstances, almost any type of furnished housing— furnishing is really critical right now relative to the disaster response because so many people have either lost their properties entirely or they've had extreme damage to their belongings.

So they don't have anything to move into a property, even if they know they're going to need to stay for 6 months, 9 months, or longer.

And I personally have friends in the area. So their home is not necessarily damaged, but they can't really get to it. And they certainly can't get to it, uh, in a way that they could move some of their belongings to a new property. They're literally looking to move into something with more or less the clothes on their back or what they had packed in their car when they left.

Being at furnished is really key.

And I point that out specifically because I know we have some folks who are typically long-term homes. Who have had questions about wanting to transition their long-term unfurnished rental to a midterm. And it's going to be critical in most cases that you provide the furnishing, the bedding, the linen, et cetera.

Hey Bonnie, I'll just chime in for a second. A lot of insurance companies will actually provide furnishing. So you definitely does not need to, and that's ideal, but they will provide that if necessary. So just side note there.

And I'll let you go into more detail on that when you get into your slides on the insurance placement situation, but I think that's a great call out. Location. Hopefully we've got some folks from a broad area. I can't see where everybody's from right now, but I can tell you personally that when I left my cabin, it took a couple of days to get out of my cabin because of the fallen trees.

We couldn't get through the road.

I had to drive all the way down to Sumter, South Carolina, even to find a hotel room in a city that had power. Don't worry if you're seeing this and feeling like this webinar is really geared towards Western North Carolina. It was originally. We've expanded that particularly as Hurricane Milton came in right on the heels of Hurricane Helene.

The principles still apply.

Swath of damage from this Hurricane was so enormous that people are going 2, 3 hours away just to find housing and trying to work remote or doing whatever they need to do in the meantime.

So if you are within that radius from the affected areas, thank you for joining this.

Thank you for wanting to operate, uh, offer your property for disaster, um, assistance.

It's definitely needed. All right. Yeah, go ahead. And be pet friendly if you can. We're going to talk more about being pet friendly, but, and I know Shannon will cover this in her portion as well. Midterm rentals, easily 50% of your standard midterm rentals, not only—

Hey, Bonnie, you're still cutting out. Maybe get a little closer to the mic. Sorry. It's just going out a little bit if you can. Okay.

I'll put it up here on my keyboard and hopefully it won't accidentally press any keys. Hopefully that's better. Try to also not move too much. Pet-friendly is key, particularly under the circumstances of people were evacuating with their pets.

And so if you have the ability to make your property pet-friendly, I highly recommend it. We can talk a little bit in the Q&A.

I know there's always questions about that and worry about damage and so forth.

So before we get too far into this, I do want to talk about—

Hey, Bonnie, sorry, you're still cutting out. Hard. It's cutting out. Can you just maybe hold the mic? Sorry. Thank you.

So here's my mic.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe just hold it.

Okay.

Or can you take the mic out maybe and just use your computer mic?

Or— I, I can sure try if that helps. It might take a second to recognize it.

Hang on.

All right.

Are you guys hearing me at all now? Yeah.

We can hear you. Yeah. You just tend to cut out a lot, so we're It's a little tricky, but yeah.

Okay.

I can't hear you as well, but that's okay. All right. I'll try to get close to my computer mic. I think that we're in a difficult time as hosts. In the case of short-term rental hosts, if you're like me, most of your bookings have canceled or been canceled by Airbnb, if not the guests themselves, and you may have a property that's sitting empty. You may have— be new to this space. You want to help out, but there are a lot of questions that are causing hesitancy and that's totally understandable. So I want to talk about those. I'm hearing from people, I'm really confused. I don't know how to do this. I normally work with a property management company, or I've only done long-term rentals, or I've only done short-term rentals. I'm, I know I should have a lease. I don't know how to go about that. We're gonna cover all of that for you to demystify it and make it a little bit easier process. People are understandably concerned about the wear and tear on their property that comes with longer stays. That's a legitimate concern, and there are some things you can do to try to mitigate that, and we'll talk about that a little bit later as well. I know that there's a lot of people who are saying, I just, I have this mortgage that I have to pay on my property and I want to help out when people are suffering, but I also feel guilty making any money on my property right now. I want to be able to offer it for free. And that's something Shona and I've talked about quite a bit. There's this guilt around charging a fee in the midst of a disaster, but I think it's important to remember that Well, we certainly are not recommending that you use a dynamic pricing tool that's going to jack up your rates during this time. Be sensitive to what your overhead is and your carrying costs on your property, because at the end of the day, you need to be made whole. And we want to make sure that your property is still there in the long run, because chances are it's what's bringing people to the area. It's providing housing, it's providing vacation stays, it's attracting tourists to the area. And all of those things are going to be incredibly important during the recovery effort for all of these communities. If that helps put your mind at ease a little bit, um, it's okay to be covering your costs right now. It's okay to have a little bit of profit built in as well.

You know, you have to make the decision that is right for you.

And if you want to, you know, offer steep discounts right now and you can, I know that is tremendously welcome. Some of the agencies that are taking on clients to offer their housing right now are putting in a cap for how much you can charge. And if that works for you, that's great as well. We just want to make all of those options available for you and just put your mind at ease about, um, the role that you can be playing right now. Uh, no matter what you're doing, you are supporting this what's happening on the ground, and that's really needed right now. You might not know how much to charge. We'll talk a little bit about that as well, how we go about doing that. And we're available to help you figure that out as well. I know personally, you'll see my contact information at the end of this, and Shona will have hers up and John will have his up. And I think I speak for all of us that we can help you figure that out. I'm being asked to offer discounts, but I'm already offering it at my breakeven point. That's real and legitimate. And I know I've had that conversation a few times. I was just 5 minutes before this webinar started reached out to by a disaster response company that wants to rent my cabin. And I said, here's what I need to make for my monthly, to cover my monthly costs. And I was very honest with them and broke it down, utilities and mortgage insurance, et cetera, and let them know that it was, it represented like 30% off my nightly rate. And they were totally satisfied with that. So there's a way to have that conversation with empathy and understanding and elicit the same from the folks that are inquiring as well. And I think there's a little bit of survivor's guilt going on. I certainly feel that when I look around my community and see the incredible damage to Batcave and Chimney Rock and Asheville and floor itself. Um, my cabin's in pretty good shape and I, there's a little bit of guilt around that. I'm like chomping at the bit, ready to get my property rented out. Um, but I'm mostly wanting to rent it out for somebody who is either a relief worker coming into the area or a family that's displaced. And at the end of the day, I've had some later bookings, like my late November, December bookings are checking in saying, hey, should we still come or should we cancel? And I've said, please still come. You know, unless I have it rented for a longer stay to a displaced family, please come because your tourist dollars are going to be needed to support the restaurants and the small businesses and all of the people who are trying to get their jobs back, get their life back in order. It's a blessing and a curse to be the last man standing in some areas, but know that your property and your support is really needed at this time. Time. All right, Shona, go ahead. Okay. I love midterm rentals. I have long-term rentals. I have one short-term rental and I have some midterm rentals and I gotta be honest, my midterm rental is like, or my midterms are my favorite. I love that they're longer stays and less turnover. For me on my midterm rentals, I happen to manage the turnovers myself. So that's when a guest leaves and then the new, you reset the property for the next one. Mine are local to me, or at least they have been. I'm actually in the process of relocating, so they will no longer be local and I won't be able to do those turnovers myself. But generally speaking, I've had a lot of traveling medical professionals in my midterm rental. They typically stay for 13— their contracts are 13 weeks. So I either get them for 13 weeks at a time, which would be 4 different contracts during the course of the year, or they extend. It's, I don't know why, but I have a lot of people extend in our particular area. And so only having to reset my property 4 times a year, as opposed to a short-term rental that could be every weekend or every few days. I love it. And I find that they take exceptional care of the property. These are working professionals and they also tend to be working during the day. They're not necessarily staying in the house 24/7 and causing a lot of wear and tear. You can thoroughly, you can, and you should thoroughly vet the tenant before saying yes. And I have to say, I'm gonna recommend that now, even under the circumstances. I know you have a lot of people who are life is pretty chaotic for them right now, but it's still very easy to do the background check. As part of that background check, you can verify their income and this gives you some peace of mind that the property is going to— your rents are gonna be paid on time. It's never 100% guarantee, but generally speaking in the midterm realm, And we don't have a lot of problems with it. And I think it is because we tend to do a very good job of vetting the tenant. Some people go so far as to ask for an application. That's one way you can mitigate any concerns about somebody staying at your property and not paying. Have a phone conversation with them. You might even check in with some prior landlords. That they have rented from just to verify that they've taken good care of it. And all of those things help mitigate it. Um, your lease agreement, we're going to show you how to put a lease in place. It does establish the rules and expectations. This also provides you with a contract. Your lease with them is a contract and it makes it very clear. This is when rent is due. The time period is from this date to this date. This is my late fee policy. This is my smoking or non-smoking policy. These are the things you're responsible for, taking garbage cans to the curb. That document set is really important. Should you, God forbid, ever find yourself in a situation where you have somebody who doesn't agree to leave when they were supposed to. You're going to need that lease agreement should you need to start an eviction or even have law enforcement come and assist you with removing somebody from the property. Without that lease agreement, you're taking, you're leaving a lot to chance, in my opinion. So strongly recommend that you do that. And it's just a safeguard for you and for them. And they're very easy to do. You have the possibility of lease extensions. I mentioned this before. It's pretty common in the MTR space to have people extend, and I know Shona will cover that as well. Very common with insurance placements because oftentimes they rent for a shorter period upfront. And then as construction happens or repairs happen at their property, it may cause them to need to extend and They usually will extend unless it's just been a horrible experience for them or for you, because it's a lot easier than finding a new property and relocating. So that's one of the, the benefits of, of having an MTR. You should be collecting a security deposit that provides you added peace of mind. It also helps give you a little bit of COVID should their contract end abruptly. There are a few other things you can do relative to that as well. Depending on how you set things up, you may choose to have the tenant pay utilities. I know for myself, if somebody's lease is less than 6 or 6 months or less, I pay the utilities. If it's over 6 months, I ask them to put the utilities in their name. That's really up to you to decide how you want to do that. You can do it either way. What I have started to do in my leases now though, is I will say I am paying the utilities up to a certain amount. I would put a cap on it. Let's just say $100. If the utility bill is more than $100, I will pay, I will charge you for the overage. And this is because occasionally you do have the tenant who runs the AC on high and leaves all of the windows and the doors open. That's a no-win situation. But if you have any kind of track record with renting out your property, you probably have a good idea what your utilities cost and you can set that cap at something that is reasonable.

Goal is not to upcharge them for the utilities, but rather to, um, just make sure that, that you are covered.

This does work with the short-term model for a hybrid strategy, and in fact, a lot of people do that on an ongoing basis. They do both MTR and STR. Sometimes you'll find people, um, who are in areas that attract a lot of snowbirds, for example, they may do short-term throughout being their busy vacation season. And then they switch to a midterm model, maybe in the dead of winter when they get a lot of people who want to relocate, uh, to get out of the colder climate, for example. Um, that can work really well in almost any environment. It's just a little trickier to manage, um, your calendar for that.

And then of course, you can tap into insurance for higher guaranteed income. The insurance placement realm is very different and I'm not going to try to go over it here.

But it's definitely something you want to be able to position yourself with for.

And if you have a furnished rental and you have the ability to do 30+ stays, definitely going to want to understand how insurance placements work and why they work the way they work.

All right, go ahead. All right. Where do I start?

Make sure your property is ready. So I do not recommend that you throw your property out there on different sites, Furnished Finder, for example, or Airbnb if you're not ready. Sorry, I'm not sure about the volume. I'm not sure I can hear you.

Yeah, maybe just hold it again. It's cutting out again. It was really solid and it started cutting out.

Yeah, I use the same thing every week. That sounds solid.

I'll just put in a little bit.

I recommend that you have it furnished already, um, before you start advertising it. People are going to want to see what it looks like and think to themselves, is this gonna work for me and my family? Is this going to be comfortable, what, what should I expect? It should really be turnkey in my opinion, or very close to turnkey by the time you offer it. The other issue is that especially right now, people are going to want to move in very quickly.

So you want to make sure that it's ready so that they can.

Research for local permit requirements is part of being ready You don't want to get somebody in there and then find out later that it's not legally allowed or that they're—

Hey, Bonnie, you're cutting out again. Sorry. Maybe I just don't know what to do. Okay.

Yeah. I've got it up at full volume and I don't know why. Shana, you could take it over if you want. Have you tried disconnecting your mic? I've connected and disconnected.

Can you just hold it? Just hold it in front of you. Is that okay?

I am holding it.

Okay. Right to your mouth though. Maybe just really close.

Yeah, I don't—

now we lost you.

Can you hear me?

Yeah. You cut out though. It's okay. Let's just, yeah. All right. Let's just keep going. Hopefully we'll just, it is what it is.

Yeah. Okay. I think it worked the best when you disconnected it.

All right.

Let's try it.

Thanks, Josh.

Okay.

So that's what we're going to go with. I'm not going to keep monkeying around with it. If it doesn't work, then Shona, you'll just have to take it over because I want people to be able to hear it. No, that sounds a lot better.

A lot better. That's really solid. So let's—

okay.

We'll give it a try. Make sure your homeowner's insurance covers midterm rentals as well, and your make sure your HOA is okay with it. If you're in an HOA, you may find nothing written that specifically addresses 30-day stays. They almost always will address, um, short-term stays and define what a short-term stay is, but don't be surprised if there's nothing specific spelling out, um, a midterm stay being approved. And that's when you want to get on the phone and talk to either your local planning department or your HOA just to make sure that it's allowed. Um, same thing, give your homeowner's insurance, uh, a call. I know I have State Farm and so long as the property is consistently occupied, um, my typical homeowner's insurance will cover midterm stays. Um, you do need to shift more of a short-term policy. or put some umbrella or riders in place with some insurance companies. They're all different though. If you're anticipating gaps in occupancy, because it is so very different depending on the insurance carrier that you have, you need to give them a call and let them know what you're doing and why you're doing it and the occupancy expectancy, just make sure that you've got the right coverage in place. You, you need to fully furnish it. And I strongly recommend that you include all of the linens and the towels especially. And I'm calling this out because I know particularly on the East Coast, it is still fairly common for people to offer short-term rentals and not include linens. And under the circumstances, I always think of THOD personally, the idea of traveling with towels and sheets and things like that, but I guess people do. But under the circumstances, you're in a situation where people probably don't have those items and are maybe not in the best economic situation to go out and be purchasing them. Please have it fully outfitted. Be generous. With your, with what you put inside your property to make it a comfortable experience.

For example, if you have a plate for, I would not recommend that you have only 4 plates and 4 knives and 4 forks.

Add a little bit so they're not having to wash constantly for every meal.

Those are just things to think about to make the stay comfortable.

And welcoming and inviting.

I always put a first aid kit, and I know that this has come up time and time again. You've probably seen stories in the news where people were injured and they were able to go to their first aid kit for just real basic supplies to get by until they could have help.

And so hopefully nothing like this happens again, but we never expected it to happen in the first place. Place. So it's not a bad idea to, you know, put an inexpensive first aid kit in your property. Somebody's asking how many sets of bedding per bed is recommended per room. I always personally have two, one on the beds and one in the linen closet. That's just my personally how I do it so that they can do a quick change if they need to. Don't forget your safety equipment. Again, Liz and Ben highlighted you at least want to have flashlights. Light batteries and you have a fire extinguisher. And in fact, your, your homeowner's insurance may require that you have fire extinguishers.

Smoke detector, carbon monoxide, radon here in this area where radon is a big concern.

Stock it with starter products. This is one of those things that I feel is more controversial than it should be. Outfit it with shampoo, hand soap, body wash, dish soap, dishwasher detergent. They don't, it doesn't have to be a lot, but at least enough so that they can take a shower the first night they get there.

They can wash the dishes if they have to.

They've got some toilet paper. They don't have to run to the store before they come to your property.

Those should all be figured into your bottom line and your expenses.

Personally, I half shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream in all of my bathrooms, hand soap, all of those things.

For toilet paper, I put 4 rolls out in every bathroom as a starter.

And for dishwasher pods, I put 5 of the dishwasher pods, um, just to get them started so they can do a few loads. And I always have a small bottle of laundry detergent available as well. If you have a washer dryer at your place, uh, you're gonna wanna create a guest manual. There are online versions that you can create. I know that Getsty has one. Uh, you can do it through Canva. There's all sorts of sources that you can use to create a digital guest manual. They're very handy. Some people I prefer them, but I can tell you that when your internet goes out and your cell service goes out and your guests can no longer access the manual and they've forgotten what the door code is and the only place it's posted is in the manual, you're gonna wish that you had a, a written out copy, an old-fashioned 3-ring binder guest manual. I really recommend that you do both. This was just really board for people during the recent disaster where internet was down for days and days. There was just no way to access that information. You want to establish a process for handling maintenance requests. Now, a lot of the software programs that people use, Inago is one of them, OwnerRes is another, hospitable.

There's a bunch of them that people use.

If you have a maintenance request, I think avail.co is another one that has a process for handling maintenance requests, or it can be just simply that you're spelling out in your guest manual and you're explaining to your guests, hey, text me, or here is my handyman's text number. Some way that you can keep track of those maintenance requests is going to be important and set that up before it's needed. The last thing you want is a guest in the middle of the night who has something happening, like the fire alarm's going off and they don't know how to reset it. And they have no idea how to get ahold of you and what the process is supposed to be. So just make it very clear and spell it out from the beginning. We're going to talk about some of the sites where you can post property. Take photos. Really professional photos are best. I know you may be scrambling to get your property up and running right now, and you don't have time. To book a professional photographer. I don't recommend that you use a real estate photographer per se. Most of us are transitioning to folks who specialize in Airbnb-type professional photos, just because they show the property a little differently.

And that's become the gold bar or the standard for your property to stand out on the places that listed. Lighting is really key. I see a lot of people closing all of the blinds, the shades, and everything, probably because their cameras are causing glare. But if you use a professional, they're going to set up like photo rings and whatnot so the lighting is perfect. You want to show it as lit as possible so people understand the space and it feels welcoming and inviting. Set up your utilities, make sure you thought of everything. Electricity is the obvious one, but don't forget about water, Wi-Fi, gas collection. For a lot of people in midterm rentals, they're offering Wi-Fi or a streaming service, but we're not necessarily subscribing to like a full cable package or paying for a subscription to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu or whatever. We're just using a smart TV. We're making streaming available and then they, because their movies are available all the time, they probably have their own accounts for each of those that they like to watch. And so they're going to be able to download their accounts onto your, your smart TV so that they can watch from their own subscription. But you want to explain all of that up front. We still don't.

Mailbox or no mailbox.

I feel like this is a 50/50 thing. Some people are adamant you absolutely should not allow people to get mail if you're squatting. It provides squatters' rights. I've heard different explanations of this. I don't think that this does convey squatters' rights per se, but I have seen in some parts of the county, maybe you I have some experience with this because I've seen it on the West Coast more than anywhere else where squatters will pay bills, say that they got to their name at your property. And they'll use that to at least temporarily convince authorities that they have a right to be in that property.

You still have to go through the proper proceeding that they don't have a right to be in that property, but it seems like if they're allowed to receive mail, the concern is that it's a little bit easier for them.

For that. I think highly jurisdictional dependent, but personally I don't let them get mail at my property simply because when you're turning them over every few months, you will be getting their mail for a long time, even if they're really good about changing it when they move. And then your next tenant is going to have to deal with that old tenant's mail. I tell them no, they need to get a PO box or nowadays start using email digitally, uh, through a digital mail. But, uh, just know that they probably still have like Amazon and DoorDash, um, delivered to your property. And that is much more difficult than just saying no, you can't have a mailbox. I tend to turn a blind eye on the Amazon deliveries and the door dash things, but that's the way I am.

That's really a decision for you.

Go ahead.

I'm just going to chime in. I think it comes down to screening. If you screen them and they're well qualified, there's not going to be any issues like that. And that's the key, I think, in that whole, that whole conversation.

Yeah, definitely on the one preventing squatters, absolutely, 100%. It is a pain to deal with somebody else's mail when they move out. And even if you go to the post office and put your mail forwarding address, it can take weeks before that actually gets there. So just be prepared for maybe more than a week. That might be necessary, whether Thank you. Thanks, Sherman. All right. So these are some of the more common places where you can list your property.

You're going to get the replay and you'll see these slides.

And so don't worry about writing all of these down right now, but Furnished Finder is the big one in the midterm realm. They're still branding themselves the number one travel nurse website, but believe me, more than travel nurses use it. I personally use it as well. And they even, according to their own data, more than 50% of their renters are not travel nurses. So very broad usage on Trusted Finder. It's not as bad as they told you. It's a lead generation funnel only, you know? But what they can do is tell you that they're interested in your property or that their profile matches your property, and then you have to follow up with them and you create the lead and you collect payment. Of course, don't build generation websites. Whereas Airbnb, VRBO, those that we're familiar with, those are actual booking platforms. Not only are you putting your listing out there, they can book it without you even knowing about it if you have an auto-approval or a payment code through the platform. Airbnb has a nonprofit arm of their company, which is Airbnb.org, which is why I have it listed separately here. We have Airbnb.org and Airbnb.com. Airbnb.org is asking people to, um, list their properties with them because they have the ability to waive, um, some of their platform fees. And they are driving people to Airbnb.org for the disaster response. So if you're already on Airbnb, make sure you are connecting with Airbnb.org. So, been around a long time. They are also now in the 30+ base case. Ministay, that's Ellen's company, we're going to talk all about them. So I'm not only looking at multi-family houses, you know, we're looking at the private rentals. You can also rent from people and bid for rentals. Same thing with Apartments.com. Tenant training and, um, as well. So we're going to talk more about look for local and regional Facebook, um, pages, which is the next slide. I'm going to do some of those that are, uh, complement Go ahead. But anyway, are all very absent and I'm constantly— I'm still looking for housing or we have nowhere to stay.

We're trying tree cutting service, or we're building roads, or we're utility workers, or whatever, are looking for housing. They are going to these sites as well.

And then I see people listing their property. That's not all of them, but that's a pretty good list of what is actively going on in West Virginia. These are— go ahead, trying to—

All right. So what's next?

Property is set up. You've got it listed on all of these sites. Now you're starting to get into it. This is where you want to jump in and start doing your background check and have your service set up ahead of time. There are a lot of them. I've used both FactCheck and Transact. They work very similarly. Basically what happens is you're going to get a credit score. You're going to get a criminal history and you're going to get an eviction history from pretty much any of these background services.

I will get the tenant name and email, and they occasionally will ask for a date of birth.

Some do not. That's all the information I need to get from the tenant.

I will initiate the background check through KeyCheck, for example.

Input that information, it will send an email link to the tenant and say, are you okay with this? And it will gather more data, for example, Social Security number, which I don't need, but the tenant will give that back, for example, and they will pay the fee. And the fee is somewhere between usually $39 to $49. And that, that background check, and it comes directly to me within minutes. Very quick. And I see that whole breakdown, credit score, including— it looks just like you pulled your own credit score, right? I'm going to see late, if they have a history of being late, if they're up to date, what their credit score is, the criminal history. It'll tell you if they've got felonies, misdemeanors, whatever. And then an addiction history as well. And then you use that to help decide. Now, be very careful about your local jurisdiction because in some areas you actually cannot, uh, not rent to somebody based on their credit score and their criminal and eviction history. I don't believe that applies in this area, although in some areas where I'm at on the West Coast and where Shona's at, You actually see them, or you're limited in your ability. I don't know if there are in the western North Carolina.

The guest usually pays for this service.

So now that you're present, background check, you're satisfied and you feel comfortable watching the person, the next thing I do is I create a date separately. And down here, they're saying, say, you can get a rental agreement link. Online.

They're all over the place.

They're relatively expensive. But what you really need is a— you want a lease that covers all of the rules and regulations and includes all of the disclaimers and the addendums that are specific to your state. Same thing if you're in Virginia, if you're in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, it doesn't matter. You want a state lease. So look for out there. Again, I used a bail. Um, I had to use, uh, Pack and Turbo Tenant for leases as well. I prefer About.co. It's easier personally for me to edit and modify and clone a lease if you want to use it again and again for your next, um, tenant. That's my preferred, but they all work very similarly. I'll just input that my state is California, so it automatically downloads the California template. I then input all of the relevant information and typically they will allow you to modify the lease or make it very specific to your area. So I'm going to put things in. Here's my quiet hours for this neighborhood. This is where you're allowed to park. This is the day of trash collection. You are responsible for taking the trash out. This is my parking policy. Things like that you can modify. Still cover your bases on all of the states. You can then modify the lease to put whatever terms and conditions you want in there. If you're working with a property attorney, I always recommend either have them draft the lease for you, or at least have them review a lease like this to make sure that they're not seeing any red flags or there's anything in there. Um, not everybody can do that. Not everybody has an attorney on on hand. I feel comfortable using LegalZoom and don't have any problem with them personally. But if you're one of those people that just really wants to dot all your i's properly, then run it by an attorney. You get the other party to sign it. Pretty much all of these online lease creation services enable DocuSign or some type of electronic signing. So once you create your lease, you then send it to your tenant. They review it. They can let you know Hey, there's a typo in here, or what about this? Should we put that in the lease? You have the ability to attach things like an inventory of your property if you want that to be part of it. A lot of people do that so that you can check off the guests and like literally check off, yep, my bedding was returned. Yep, I have 12 forks and I got all 12 forks back. Definitely do that as part of your lease or as an addendum too if you want to. Once they, they sign it, then it comes over to you and then you re-sign it and then everybody gets a final copy of the document. Once I get my lease signed, that's when I collect the security deposit. You can do it however you want, but my recommendation is that you collect the security deposit at the time fully signed because that is what secures their booking for the property. If they're saying, oh, I want to move in on November 1st and I'll give you the security deposit on November 1st, just know that your property isn't really rented and secure until you get that. And sometimes they're booking weeks and months in advance. And so you want to know that you have that one locked down because otherwise you have a family coming in. That's personally how I use the security deposit. I use a banking and bookkeeping platform called Baselane. There are lots of them out there. I already named some of them. There's a bunch of them out there and a lot of those give you the ability to collect and handle security deposits.

I like to use Baselane for for rent payments and collecting security deposits because it is also my banking and bookkeeping platform. So I feel like it just integrates very seamlessly. You do want to hold your security deposit separate from your other operating funds for your property. Technically, you are not supposed to mix those funds because the security deposit legally needs available anytime, anytime you, you are required to refund it. So I just have a separate bank account set up for security deposits, and I find it's very simple to manage and it's clean and it's easy. And then I'm never at a risk of accidentally having spent those funds when it's time to refund somebody their security deposit, if a refund is due. You don't need to do this if you only have one property, but it's now so easy, it's highly recommended, and that is to create some type of property management system or use some type of off-the-shelf property management system that includes automation to help simplify your management. For example, I use Hospitable. That's the platform that I use. And it has a lot of prepared messages that I can set up the timing on. For example, when somebody moves in, they get a welcome message saying, here's everything you need to know about your property. If you are using a simple or similar program for your short-term rentals, it's easy to do the same thing with the midterm rental and just modify the message a little bit so that you're including things that are relevant to your midterm that maybe were not relevant, like trash collection, for example. I send out a reminder weekly, like, don't forget trash cans need to be out by 6:00 AM tomorrow morning and then bring them back same night. Those types of automations. Same thing with automated reminders when rent is due. This is something else that I like about Baselane. I'm really not here to plug Baselane, but I'm just explaining to you how I use it.

It automatically sends payment reminders to the tenant, like they get it a week in advance and then a day in advance if they haven't yet paid it. And that prevents me from having to call them going, hey, I haven't seen your payment, don't forget.

So those automations can be super, super helpful if you're self-managing your property. There are people who specialize in managing midterm rentals.

So if you don't have the time or are not interested in managing the property yourself, you can look for a company that will manage them.

I will say that it is a different beast than managing a long-term rental, and a lot of long-term rental companies will say that they can do midterm rentals, but what they're missing is that hospitality orientation and just all of the things that are involved in managing a midterm. That's a part where they looked a lot more like short-term rentals than they do long-term. So just thoroughly vet the company and see if they have experience with midterm rentals and talk through that process and how they would handle guest requests and so on and so forth. We may even have some folks that are on the webinar now who do co-hosting for midterm rentals. And if that's the case, when you want to put a shout out there for people who are looking for somebody to manage their property, feel free to just drop your contact information in the chat. We want to make this as easy as possible for people.

All right.

And here's just a pro tip for you. One good way to mitigate concerns about wear and tear on the property is to offer a midday cleaning. It's up to you whether you want to charge them for it or you want to just include it. You've already factored that into the cost of the rent. What I like about it is that not everybody keeps up with the cleaning. So this is potentially going to, uh, make it a little bit easier on your cleaner or yourself when you do the turnover. But the other thing is it's getting eyes on your property.

So somebody's going in there and just making sure that their pet cat hasn't shredded your couch or their dogs are chewing on the baseboard, there's a leak under the sink nobody bothered to point out to you. Those are the types of things that a good estate cleaning can catch before they become super problems.

All right. Now to the next. I'm realizing I took off my watch. We're at 10 o'clock.

Okay.

So I gotta hurry it up.

All right.

Do be prepared to offer a video walkthrough of your space. You can literally with your cell phone, take a video and have it available.

It's often hard to show your property in person. And when people are coming from a long ways away, they want to make sure that it's real and legit. Unfortunately, there are scammers in this space on the host side, just like there are often scammers out there on the guest side, whether it's a short-term rental or a long-term rental. It's understandable that they want to know that this is a real place. You are a real landlord. They're getting what and think they're getting based on your photos. But having a video walkthrough, just describing your space and showing them the flow, it can be really helpful. We already talked about the mid-season cleanings. Great if you can provide local information and insight. They're probably not familiar with your area. That may be one of the things that's a little bit different right now with the disaster response that they may actually see from your area. But if you can provide this information, it's always appreciated.

We already talked about utility cap and then dog-friendly properties.

If you want them to clean up after their dogs, it really helps if you provide potty bags and let them know where they're supposed to put them. But again, if you can offer a pet-friendly, not just dog-friendly, you could offer a pet-friendly property. Those properties can be few and far between to find. And so it's really going to help you stay booked. And we've seen this.

Layout. All right. So that, I think I'm almost on time, Shona, a little bit over.

That's cool.

Yeah. So I'm just going to go ahead and let's just transition right into you. And remember, we're going to do Q&A at the end. We'll go to Shona, then we'll go to John. We'll do Q&A at the end. And right now I'm going to be capturing a lot of the questions and make sure that they're teed up. So that we can address them during the Q&A. I'm going to do that while you're doing it.

Awesome. Thanks, Bonnie. Yes. My name is Sharna. If you haven't met me, I'm an experienced midterm operator. I have a podcast. I coach students on this, but I really want to add a lot of value here. At the end, I do have a group so you can join that. I do a lot of, you know, free content around this, but insurance is, it's a lot of nuance to it. So I'm just going to try and really break it down and explain a lot of things and On the end, we can do Q&A and cover that. So I think one of the biggest things is let's just say where to list, right? Bonnie covered this, so I'll breeze through it, but just to underscore Furnished Finder, I get a lot of insurance companies looking on Furnished Finder. Just like Bonnie said, it's not just travel nurses. They're even saying that themselves, right? There are a lot of nurses there, which is great, but a lot of, I get a lot of like temporary housing companies reaching out who work with insurance on Furnished Finder. So do not ignore that. The listing fee is like $150. It's well worth it. I've had to get a lot of leads from there. Again, Bonnie mentioned Zillow Rental Manager, highly recommend it. You can check the furnished box. I get a lot of leads from there. Again, I'd be on Airbnb. Make sure your calendar is clear. You can do like a duplicate listing strategy. Maybe you have a short-term version, then you have a long-term, like midterm version of it, but just make sure that your calendar is open because if you have your calendar blocked by spotty listings, you will not get found for midterm stays. And I know John, I, you're going to talk about how you can sync your listings from Airbnb. That's another one. ManyStays, check them out. VRBO is back on the map. I kind of forgot about it, but I am starting to get leads from VRBO again. So these are like really high level plus ManyStays, but this is the top places. I'm going to really dive deep into how to list with temporary housing companies, but It can be a little overwhelming. These are just like the top places. So take a screenshot of that. And then I'm going to really cover the temporary housing databases. I'll explain the whole process. This is just an example of how you can get directly into their databases. They will look on the sites I just mentioned. They will also look in their own databases. There's kind of no rhyme or reason to it. You get leads from all of these places. So just take the time and I'm going to provide, um, my full list that I provide my coaching students with all It has a huge list of all the places to list. Don't stress about that. And there's lots of ways to find them. So another thing when you're listing, and this is really nuanced but important, what happens is, and I'll explain the process, we want to let people know that we understand short-term. We offer the, some of, there's some really big keywords here. Like this is an example of a listing on Zillow, right? And I'm optimizing it. So I'm Using these keywords that are going to make sense to people that are in need of temporary homes, right? I'm saying relocate. Again, I'm underscoring pet-friendly. I can't emphasize that enough. You guys, like, charge a pet fee, charge pet rent, but pets are part of your family. They're generally responsible pet owners. Like, they're not just going to leave their pets behind if they need to be relocated, right? So people are so appreciative. So if you can be pet-friendly, please do that. We're saying specifically designed for families in need of temporary housing, right? We're really underscoring this because a lot of times what happens is A temporary housing company will call a longtime landlord and they're like, what do you mean? I only wanna rent for a month. I only do 12-month leases. I just, they do not understand the model. So by optimizing ourselves with these kind of keywords, we're letting, we're letting families know that had been displaced. We're letting temporary housing companies know we understand the model. So again, the keywords are flexible stays, home repairs, relocation. We work directly with insurance companies and policyholders in need of temporary housing. So this is super important that you speak to that in your description, that you're letting people know that we understand this model again, because a lot of even short-term rental owners, like they don't want their— if you guys were transitioning, so just take a screenshot of this, make sure that you're really weaving that into your listing description. And that's really helpful. And I'll get calls like, oh, I see you understand the model. And they're just really appreciative of that because a lot of times people don't understand the insurance model and I'm going to unpack that more. So that's just a little tip there. Again, I, this is more on optimization, right? Uh, Airbnb at, I'm always putting my company name, like at my company name is Senior Imports Properties. We offer flexible stays for those encountering home repairs or relocation. Again, I'm saying we work directly with insurance companies and policyholders in need of temporary housing, right? And I'm putting this at the bottom of the listing, but again, I'm really emphasizing the flexibility and temporary housing, and often Sometimes I can get people off Airbnb with this, right? Because they're going to go Google me. I'm going to cover how to do that, right? So you really want people to be able to find you and you really want to emphasize flexible stays, pet-friendly, all of those things that really helps you get those kinds of bookings, right? So that's just a quick tip here. If you're— feel free to take a screenshot of that. And I like to list my kind of amenities, right? And the other thing I really want to highlight with Airbnb, right? A lot of times if you're doing the hybrid, right, or maybe you have an Airbnb that's really STR-focused, really focused on nightly stays, just duplicate that listing and make it for an MTR listing, a midterm rental. And you're going to tweak it so that it's really focused on what would an amenity be instead of vacationy. It's, it's a 5-bedroom home. It's family-friendly. You have a dedicated office. You have a fully stocked kitchen. Like people that are looking for temporary housing for midterms are not in vacation mode. They're not looking for the game room or the Instagram wall. They're looking for really good internet, dedicated workspace, like family-friendly, flexible stays. So we're really wanting— if we are, or if you're going to transition to that, you really want to focus on that. Even with your pictures, your like listing title, instead of saying luxury vacation home, we're going to say 5-bedroom home, flexible stays, or really really trying to optimize for the longer stays, right? So you can have 2 listings on Airbnb. So that's one strategy because again, if your calendar is— any platform, if it's peppered with stays, you're not going to get found for longer stays, right? So it's really important to weave in these keywords and I'll show examples of inquiries and you'll see the keywords that they're using, which is why we're weaving them into kind of our listing description.

All right.

This is like an example of a flyer. We're saying fully furnished midterm rentals. We're saying pet-friendly monthly rentals, all the comforts of home, perfect for families facing relocation, home repairs, remote work. And again, we're saying we partner with insurance and relocation companies to provide flexible housing solutions with lease, lease terms ranging from short terms to extended stays. Again, you guys, because a lot of people, they don't understand this model. They're very concerned about, I don't want to book for a month. They just, they don't understand it. And we are charging a premium for that. And it's okay because we're offering a ton of flexibility. So I really want to underscore that, kind of just weaving that into your descriptions. Um, again, I, it's really good just to get found online. If you want to take someone off platform, you can put up a website. That's a little daunting. There's a lot of wizzy-wig stuff, but just setting up a Google My Business profile was one of the easiest things you can do. Helps you get found. Again, you're just optimizing. If you wanna take someone off Airbnb to do a direct booking, this is the, the best thing you can do. I also highly recommend you can ask for reviews on it. With midterm rentals, thing I love about midterm, if you guys are coming from short-term, is that reviews honestly don't matter. It sounds crazy, but I feel like you live and die by reviews in short-term. Midterm, it's way less important. I still ask for them. I still think it's social proof. I think it's best practice after a guest leaves. If you have, if you're on Google My Business, ask for a review. Again, it's not as critical as it is in short-term, but it's just really a best practice and it's just, you might as well capture that. So that's a little side tip. So then temporary housing databases, these are, and I'm gonna explain this, temporary housing companies partner with insurance companies because when a family files a claim, insurance, they are not in the housing business. They are all about insurance and they have adjusters. And so they're partnering with these companies. So take a screenshot, like these are the really big ones. ALE Solutions, Allocrocity, Sedgwick, CRS. And again, I'm going to give you guys what I give my coaching students, which is like a huge list of all the databases. So you really want to take the time to put yourself into these databases so they can find your property. Because again, if you're on Airbnb and your calendar's not open, they're not going to find you, right? So we can go directly to the source and list ourselves. So these are just like very high-level places and I'll give you guys the full list. Again, of course, always include mini stays too. But again, this is just to highlight like high level where if you're gonna pick the top places, Airbnb, Zillow Rental Manager, Furnish Finder, VRBO, ALE, Allocrossity, CRS, Cedric. There's a lot of them. You can even like Google temporary housing companies, use ChatGPT to find ones locally. There's all kinds of ways to find them. I will give you a list at the end of this that's really comprehensive, just just, it's tedious, but it's really important because they will look in these places to find you. Insurance companies are motivated, right? And I know we're— this audience that we have here has been affected by the hurricanes, right? So I'm going to cover how insurance works and the process. It's really nuanced, but hopefully I can unpack it and explain it. You have your insurance company like Allstate, USAA, State Farm, right? They have as part of their policy, this is like Section D, it's called Additional Living Expenses or ALE. It is a huge industry and they have a budget for this. So if you are working with someone that has filed a claim, it's okay to charge a premium, right? You are offering a service, you're providing a ton of value. People are in need, but just know they have a budget for this and they're paying insurance and they should be using it, right? When, when someone files a claim, the adjuster comes out and they're saying, okay, you can't be in this home. It's not safe. They're often put up in a hotel and they're get— they're the funds for the temporary housing are coming from like the ALE, right? And those are the housing providers. So now I'm gonna cover the 7 steps for getting an insurance contract, right? And there's a lot of nuance to this and we'll have time for in the Q&A, but first thing is a life event happens, or in this case, a hurricane hits. It's really devastating. These families are just— it's terrible. And they've never been through this before, most likely. So it's really traumatic. And we want to keep that in mind when we're— when we get these kinds of leads. So something happens, right? This is an example, like I'm on the West Coast. Just an example. We had a huge storm last winter. This is an example of kind of an inquiry that I got. This was from Furnished Finder. They're saying we had a tree fall on our house. We're looking for a fully furnished short-term rental, right? And this is just an inquiry. And this, to me, I can tell that they probably have an insurance claim. And it's helpful to know that for context, because that's going to affect the price. Because oftentimes insurance, they, they're very— but they have big pockets, but they're budget conscious. They're gonna start out with a 1 or 2 month lease and just know they're probably going to extend. But if we're only doing a 1 month lease, we're gonna certainly charge a premium for that. So you can assume when you get these leads, it's probably an insurance claim or make sure you clarify that. All right. So then something happens, they're going to file a claim. Oftentimes they're going to be put in a hotel, right? That's not always, and it's always a little bit different, but most likely they're going to get put up in a hotel while they find more like temporary permanent housing for the families. So these are just examples of all the insurance. And again, these are not housing companies. They are not in the temporary housing. Housing business, right? They're all in that insurance. That's their business model, right? And that, so what happens is these insurance companies, they partner with the temporary housing companies. One of the biggest ones is ALE Solutions, if you've heard of that. They just partner with them because that's what they do, right? And that's, so they say, okay, they're gonna set you up. Sometimes families go find housing on their own. That's fine. I'd say 90, 95% of the time they're working with a temporary housing company, right? That's the process. Again, here's some big ones and you can list yourself directly in their databases. ALE Solutions, Alcrossity, CRS, Sedgwick, right? These are some of the big names. There's a lot of companies out there. And what happens is they have re— there's different titles, but there's some kind of relocation specialist that is working at these companies who has the contract with insurance, and they're going to reach out to you and say, I have a family, there's 4 adults, 2 kids, something happened at their home. We're looking for X thing, right? So I'll show some examples of that. Again, I think sometimes they reach out, they, you may never hear from them again. They're very busy, right? They're helping a lot of families. So it's okay to follow up with them. They're not ghosting you. They just have a lot of cases and they are nationwide, right? They're not, they're in all 50 states, right? So they just, it's okay to follow up with them. I think a lot of times they reach out and maybe they found a property, they don't have time. To reach back out to every person they've contacted to say, oh, we found a property. So just be helpful, be a resource. I always let them know, hey, like I'm in Portland, Oregon. Consider me a resource. Like I have a great network. We all have networks, right? We're all part of communities. So if they reach out to me and I don't have a property, I go out to my network and say, hey, I'd love to help this family out. So always be a resource, always be helpful. They are a wealth of knowledge. You can ask them questions. Questions, just, just really position yourself as a resource, like how you can help them, right? Here's another example. This is, I think, Furnished Finder. So they're saying this traveler's inquiring about your property. So they're saying, I work for— they're telling you, I work for temporary housing, which we know is one of the ALE solutions. We know that's an insurance claim when they're saying temporary housing, right? That's just a keyword. Just know that, right? And they usually give you this information. They'll tell you the amount of adults, the amount of kids, and they're displaced. In the area and need a rental for 1 month. They always start out with a month or 2, which is just— the adjusters don't wanna commit to a 6-month lease. They, but they always extend. We all know that contractors take forever. If there was— I'm sure hurricane damage takes quite a long time to fix. They might only have approval for 2 months, but they're most likely going to extend. And therefore, again, we're charging a premium for that short-term lease, right? So this is just an example of an inquiry that we're getting again through Furnished Finder, right? So when you see this, it's just like a clue. It's probably an insurance claim, right? Here's another example. And this is from ALE Solutions. We're saying we have a local family that has damage to their home. Again, these are all the keywords we're looking for. Yeah, I found this rental in our database, right? This is an example because I listed myself and all my properties in their database, right? So they're coming, they're finding you in different ways and we really just wanna get found. We wanna optimize us ourselves to get found. So that's why it's really important to go directly to ALE Solutions. And I've asked them like, where do you find properties? Oh, we look at our databases. Sometimes we look on Airbnb. So it's really different. There's, it just, you wanna be where they're looking and they're giving the address. Like in this case, they're saying we're looking for a 6-month lease with the option to extend a month to month. And that's pretty typical, right? They'll, they will book for a couple months or even a month. And so I generally, I don't book people behind them. And that's different with midterm cuz I wanna give them the option to extend. So I'll check in 30 to 45 days out and say, hey, do you need to extend? I really wanna accommodate that. And they're always gonna give you like the adults, the cat, the cats, a dog. I've gotten inquiries for a duck and chickens and I'm okay with it. Like I just charge a pet fee. I protect myself. And again, these are families, they're homeowners. They're really responsible. They're in a bind. So don't be afraid of pets. I can't underscore that enough. I'm sure we can do some Q&A about that at the end. So again, the relocation specialist, they're gonna ask you all these questions, right? And they will ask you, so don't feel like you have to know all the answers. They're gonna want the available date, the month. They will always ask you the monthly rate. It doesn't matter what's listed. They're gonna ask you that. And if your rate is like X amount, but they wanna start with a much shorter stay. It's okay to add a little more just to accommodate for that insecurity and that flexibility, right? They're gonna ask if it's furnished and Bonnie was right. Most of the time they're looking for furnished, but they will, they will often accept unfurnished and they partner with furnishing companies so they can take care of that. So if you have a long-term rental, put it out there as a midterm and they can do it in a couple days. They're really fast about it. No problem. So they, and sometimes they're even looking for unfurnished because they make a profit on the furnishing, right? So I'd say 90% is furnished and we can charge a premium for furnished. So I recommend that. And I think it's just a quicker move-in, but it does not need to be furnished. I was going to ask lease terms. I recommend just say like a month minimum. Yes, we want longer leases. Typically they're 3 to 6 months, but they might start out with a month and then they're going to extend most likely. So just be flexible, be accommodating. Like we are in the service business. How can we help them? They're gonna ask if utilities are included, right? And like Bonnie said, this can be a negotiation. I usually include them, but if, if you're getting back into like rates, you can say, how about I don't include the utilities? So it's all negotiable. And they're gonna wanna know about fees, right? They're always gonna ask you in some form of these questions that might not be the same, but they will just ask you and you just rattle it off. They're gonna ask about an application fee, which I always charge. They're gonna ask about security deposit and they're always gonna wanna know, is it refundable? Clearly it's refundable. And I will say just the way I run things with security deposit. So if it's a, if it's a traditional midterm renter, say it's like a traveling nurse, my deposit is one month's rent. It may be high, but that's how I run it. I've, I come from like a longtime landlord perspective. And for me, that's security. But with a temporary housing claim, I always make my security deposit a lot less than what I normally would because I'm charging a premium. And these families generally, it's an unexpected move. They were not planning on moving. So say my rent is $6,000 for a 1-month lease. I'm gonna make my security deposit like $2,000 because I know that it's a family that wasn't expecting to move and That really helps you get approval, like adjusters like that, the temporary housing companies like that. It's easier on the family. So just know that if it's an insurance lead, you can even make it less. So definitely make your security deposit, just keep that into consideration when it's, um, an insurance thing. So I just really wanna underscore that it's a family. They were not expecting to move. They may not have the reserves, right? So that's one thing. They're gonna ask about a cleaning fee. You, they will often ask about an admin fee and look, there is a lot of back and forth. It's more paperwork. I think it's okay to charge for that. They're asking you, just charge an admin fee. Like I charge $250, right? I don't charge that if it's a direct booking, say from a nurse because it's pretty straightforward. There's not all this back and forth, all these parties involved. I, pets are great. I love them, but I'll tell you, they pee, they leave a lot of hair, right? So just. Accept them, but charge a pet fee, right? That is non-refundable too. That is, that's gonna cover all your extra cleaning costs if you have to like change your sheets or whatever, right? Order a new couch cover. I just had a turnover and the couch cover is pretty much toast. I'm like, that's why I charge a pet fee, right? I charge a pet rent per pet. And then any other fees, these are typical fees. You might have other fees and they're gonna ask you the best contact info. How to reach you, how to do like a tour of the property. Jeez, I'm running low on time here. Okay. I'm gonna try and speed through this. And then, then we're gonna, so the relocation reaches out to you or the family, usually it's the relocation specialist. Then you're gonna negotiate price and it's just let them know you can work with them. Sometimes I'm adjusting my pet fees or just let them know that. And usually there's a little back and forth, but you usually, you email it to you and I do it on length of stay. If they only want to book a month, there is a premium for that. If they're willing to say, hey, we're going to commit to 6 months, I'm going to take that into account, right? That's a lot less turnover for me. So just know that it's a little bit nuanced and that's why sometimes we are charging more of a premium with insurance because they're starting with really short bookings and that we need to make sure that we're covering our overhead because we might have more vacancy. So that's generally how I do a tiered pricing structure, right? Just so you know. So there's no hard and fast formulas on what you can charge. And we don't want to price gouge. That we do— the reason we're usually charging more is because they're coming in with a 1 or 2 month booking. That's a lot of insecurity for us. We're offering a ton of flexibility. So generally it's based— their budget is gen— and you can ask them. They don't always like to give you their budget. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Can't hurt to ask, but generally they need— the family needs to be put up in a comparable pod. Property. So if it's a 3-bedroom, they're gonna want a 3-bedroom, right? They're gonna want a fenced yard, whatever their home is, they're gonna need to be put up in a comparable property. So beds, baths, the neighborhood type, the estimated home value, and each policy has benefits based on their insurance plan. It's always gonna be a little bit different, right? And we wanna make sure the price works up for multiple extensions, right? Because they do have a fixed budget for temporary housing. So how much does insurance pay? I covered this before, but it's coverage D is loss of use coverage. And it just covers all those additional costs for temporary housing. So really rough napkin math. And again, every policy is different. There's really no blanket way to say this, but just for reference, right? Say the homeowner's home was worth $400,000. 20% of that is $80,000. So then divided by 12 is $7K. So we might say, okay, Maybe 5 or 6 is reasonable, right? Again, that's just really rough math. Again, we're not trying to price gouge, but we are offering a lot of flexibility. We're offering a fully furnished property. Utilities are generally included, so we need to cover our costs, right? This is just more on ALE, right? It's covering all these things. I'm gonna try and be speedy here, but these are more examples of inquiries that I'm getting. Sometimes they're giving me the price, which is helpful. Right? Sometimes they don't. In this case, they're saying unfurnished is X, furnished is X, right? They're giving you the terms. They're always gonna say pets, like here's a lizard and a bunny, right? I would be open to that. I would just charge for that. And here they're saying ASAP. And when they say ASAP, you guys, it's— they're not gonna move in tomorrow. There's an application process, is at least a week. So even if you have a guest in there, like just say yes, it's available in a week. They're not gonna move in the next day because you need to screen them. You need to go through the whole formal process. So don't let that freak you out. They're always going— there's always a process to get them in. They need to get approval. The family has to see the property. So here they're saying 1 month and their budget is $9K, right? And here, this is the booking for like $28K. It's a longer stay, right? That's an Airbnb, right? This is an email. This is an email, and this is through Airbnb, right? So we're getting leads from all these different places, which is why we really wanna list our yourself on them. Yeah, I'm going to try and wrap this up. This is again, an Airbnb listing. They're saying, hey, this is MyKey Global Accommodations. We have a— see, they're saying family is displaced and they need placement for these dates. Right. And they're saying, would you hold it for 24 hours? And they need to get adjuster approval. Right. And that's always— the adjuster will always need to approve the budget. That's why there's a lot of back and forth. Right. So this is a great booking. That's— they all, they're all a little bit different. Again, more kind of examples. They're saying they're looking for this location. It's very zip code specific. So make sure to always give your address. Like Airbnb won't give their— it's hidden until you book, but they want it. They think they need the zip code and the address so they can map it out and see how close it is. And again, they're saying 30 days. That's super common. They're always probably going to extend. So just price accordingly for that. So again, family, and then so the family will generally, so a lot of times with midterm, traveling nurses will not see the property. That's why I have video tours. I have virtual tours that I just link to and they can see that. With insurance claims, typically they're gonna wanna see the