Sarah Weaver
Sarah Weaver has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Midterm Rental Mastery with Sarah Weaver
Sarah Weaver, BiggerPockets' midterm rental author, explains how she built a 19-unit portfolio (10 long-term, 9 midterm) while investing out of state and self-managing from afar. She walks through how to identify an ideal tenant, research a market with Furnished Finder stats and direct outreach to nearby hosts, and what it costs to have a company fly out and furnish a unit for you. She also describes her Invested Adventures travel business for investors and the mindset work she believes stops most people from buying.
Key takeaways
- Start by asking who your ideal tenant is; that answer drives furnishings (blackout curtains, box fan, sound machine for night-shift nurses), flooring, paint and kitchen setup.
- Use furnishedfinder.com/stats to gauge midterm rents in a market, then message neighboring furnished-rental hosts with specific questions ("I see it's listed at $1,250 — are you ever getting more?") instead of asking to pick their brain.
- Midterm rental data is thin because Furnished Finder is a listing site, not a booking site; Weaver also lists on Airbnb, Zillow and travel-nurse Facebook groups, and says over 23% of Airbnb bookings are now 28 days or more.
- Test before committing a whole portfolio: Weaver runs one side of a duplex as a midterm and the other as a long-term rental for a year to see which performs.