We recently purchase our first rental (3 br., 3ba, 1800sqft townhome) a couple of months ago in Huntsville, AL. Our intent was to do an LTR; however, it seems the market has cooled somewhat and we are not having much luck. We are investigating furnishing the townhome and renting it via Airbnb, short term furnished rental, or targeting the traveling nurses market. Wondering if there are any investors in the Huntsville, AL that have experience that they would like to share.
Speaking of cooling off . . . the travel nursing industry, too, has cooled off from the 2020-2021 maniacal highs.
The good news is that hospitals have long been, and likely will always be, a driver of short term and mid-term stays.
Furnishedfinder is an annoyingly good platform for finding folks in this medical travel community, but don't neglect to also post on Airbnb and VRBO if you're up for it. Use a good calendar sync software to avoid double bookings and you should be set
Echo what others have said — FurnishedFinders is an awesome platform for MTRs and travel nurses. I'd check out some free tools like data.rabbu to gauge how much you could make with it as an STR and see your competition.
@Casey Ryska - I recommend studying comps on furnished finder to see how much people are actually charging for similar places. I experienced a lull in being able to long term rent out a 4br 3ba in Baton Rouge and I strongly considered furnishing it and listing on furnished finder. After spending some time looking at comps I realized that people were not really charging any more for furnished mid-term rentals than I was charging for unfurnished long-term rentals. In other words, I was not going to really make more money doing mid-term, certainly not enough to justify the expense of furnishing and additional time managing the property. I held out a little longer and found a solid long-term tenant, so it worked out.
There are a few factors in which your experience may vary though. Obviously a different market. Also, I wasn't willing to go the rent by room route, which potentially could have been more profitable than renting out the entire place.
@Casey Ryska all my friends with STR and MTR's said they're bookings are picking up in Huntsville. The hot season for bookings is between March and October. I don't personally have any of my own right now but have sold hundreds of contracts and properties in the HSV area, and just my personal contacts have 100's of furnished units in the area that are successful. Their bookings are less often nurses and more often government contractors.
Huntsville is big enough to have some demand for medium-term rentals. I'd do as others have said and check out Furnished Finders to see if there are others doing what you're considering doing. Travel nurses is a big demographic for MTRs, but so are remote workers and people moving to the city who don't want to buy yet.
If you do end up going that route, I'd check out Erin's Guide to Midterm Rentals. It's a quick read and has a lot of great tips and checklists to help set up and operate an MTR.
Please keep us posted on how this goes if you do it!
Me and a friend are considering doing MTRs (as our first investment property), and we haven't checked out Huntsville, but I've heard good things about the market in general.
I've not had much luck with nurses in the area and furnished finder has been a bust so far for me in Huntsville. I did just barely miss an insurance claim on the site, so that was interesting and was going to pay well. I reached out to a few people who had listed on the site and most said they hadn't had any luck either unfortunately.
I have a friend who is a travel nurse who did some digging for me, and apparently, although we have the right size hospitable for it, the hospital is actively trying to keep travel nursing at a minimum so they don't have to pay the higher prices. There are more travel nurse contracts here since COVID happened but they are low paying (and generally for our smaller non-level 1 trauma hospital) and don't bring in enough to cover even your typical long term rental rate. I have had some luck with people contacting me for internships, but the pay they can offer is typically not in line with what I wanted. Honestly can get more by renting out through a short term rental mostly to people on business travel, but I'm in the city center so figure that into your situation. Again, STR are not technically allowed for "tourist homes" in very many places in the city as most, but not all, R2B zoned areas are limited in the number of residential houses in them, but are many times commercial spaces such as small dental offices.
On a plus side, I did just land a little over 3 month contract with a person coming in for temporary contract work for a defense contractor...we shall see if it becomes a steady thing, or a one off. Best of luck!