How are you all preventing vacancy gaps between mid-term stays?

Question

Curious how others are handling this…

Let’s say you have a 30+ day rental model (due to HOA restrictions or local regulations), and you get an inquiry for a stay that begins 20 days after your initial guest checks out.

Do you:

• Decline it and hope for sooner stay? 
• Accept it and sacrifice the occupancy? 
• Require them to change their dates?

If short-term stays aren’t an option for the gaps in between, what is your actual strategy for minimizing downtime between tenants?

Allen Duan · Answer

This is one of the biggest challenges with MTRs if you're in a market that does not allow STR stays to fill those gaps. Short answer for me is I use pricing to manage this. For example, if someone were to make a new booking that creates a 20-day gap, their rate will be high enough to compensate for the lost income over those 20 days. I've created my own MTR pricing strategy that incorporates a lot of the STR pricing principles like this.

Shannon Strickland · Answer

I use a template message that asks prospects to reach out again about three weeks before their desired move-in date so I can confirm availability. Most of my leads want housing 1-3 weeks out. In most cases, strong leads come in before then, so I’m also comfortable with a short vacancy (a couple of weeks).

Dana Kimball · Answer

I deal with this on my two MTRs near Asheville. What's helped most is I start marketing the next tenant about six weeks before my current lease ends, not when they leave. If a travel nurse tells me they're out June 15th I have a Furnished Finder listing live by early May. That gets me ahead of the gap instead of reacting to it after the fact.

When I do get a lead with a 2-3 week gap before their move-in date, I usually just take the booking and eat the vacancy. Turning down a confirmed 3-month tenant because you're hoping someone with better timing shows up is a gamble I've lost before. The revenue from the full stay almost always makes up for a couple empty weeks.

The other thing that helps is reaching out to unmatched leads on FF proactively. Half my bookings last year started with me contacting the tenant first rather than waiting for them to find my listing.

Kenneth Garrett · Answer

@Taylor Arbaugh

Vacancy rates on MTR are greater than LTR.  When you can’t supplement STR for open dates, you’ll have to accept some vacancies.  I think 3 weeks is acceptable depending on how long their stay is.  Of course, it depends on your market.  In my market, I’ll have some weeks of vacancy, but the rate I can get out weighs the vacancy.

How are you all preventing vacancy gaps between mid-term stays?

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