An international crisis may strike your vacation rental company hard, leaving you scratching your brain in worry about whether you’ll be able to pay your payments. Even if you often utilize your property for pleasure and vacation, you may still make use of it in a time of need. Not to mention that there is still a current housing shortage. There are always more methods to make money with your short-term rental property so that you may continue with holiday rentals until the crisis is over.
While many of these alternatives aren’t as lucrative as vacation rentals previously were, they’ll keep your company’s needle from falling to zero.
Making the switch to mid-term rentals
Mid-term rentals are the most logical transition from short-term rentals. As you may know, although not necessarily spanning years as long-term rentals do, these rentals welcome visitors for 30 days or more.
This is an excellent choice if you’re not ready to sign long-term leases with renters and you’re still holding out hope that things will improve once the epidemic is over.
Mid-term rentals (MTRs) are an excellent price point since you may charge a good 25–30% more than you would for a long-term rental, but not as much as for short-term rentals. To at least break even or minimize losses is the objective in the present economic scenario.
Your duties in MTRs, however, are more akin to those of an LTR landlord. Pay close attention to any rental-related rules that your county may be enforced during this time.
So, who can you currently house in MTR?
Offering to house students
Many students need a temporary place to remain after being ejected from their dorm rooms when institutions close. Students aren’t picky and don’t want anything expensive; they just need a furnished house with the internet.
This may not be the greatest target market for you if you have a huge, luxurious apartment or multi-family house since their finances are often rather constrained.
If you reside in a college town, get in touch with the housing offices of the nearby colleges to see how you may assist them in housing displaced students.
Having visiting nurses
Healthcare workers around the country are becoming ill and need to be isolated as a result of a lack of masks and protective equipment. Hospitals are responding by employing travel nurses from all across the nation, and they all require accommodation.
Travel nurses often stay between one and four months, with different housing stipends that are typically larger than those offered to students. They will either get housing from the travel nurse staffing firm that is recruiting them or a stipend and the option to select their place.
A new Coronavirus Survival Kit from the Short-Term Rental Profit Academy contains email templates you may use to pitch your rental to travel nurse staffing agencies.
Additionally, you may modify the headlines of your advertisements to expressly state that you are lodging travel nurses rather than passengers.
And other lone healthcare professionals
Local healthcare professionals who must live apart from their families to prevent harm to them are another profile in need of accommodation. They just require a comfortable bed with amenities that are either near to the hospital or close to their family home—or both—because they are familiar with the region and don’t need to be convinced to go on a vacation.
You may let your neighborhood hospitals know that you have accommodations for these heroes available. Your listing should remain booked with this option at least until the crisis.
People “Sheltering in Place” Are Being Targeted
Now, the bulk of the country’s counties is required to take refuge inside. This leaves individuals without homes who are not in their city or state.
Because many of them won’t know where else to seek temporary lodging, you could still be able to discover them on Airbnb or other vacation rental websites.
What to Be Wary of
In several jurisdictions, occupancy with more than two persons is now temporarily prohibited and seen as unsafe. As a result, numerous counties around the US are enacting legislation addressing rentals. Make sure to thoroughly check everybody you allow inside. For instance, we wouldn’t advise accepting a group of 5–6 strangers since they may be harmful.
Your Website for Vacation Rentals
One of the finest methods to attract prospective visitors or renters is to have your vacation rental website. The website may be re-optimized to better serve the target market. Through this catastrophe, we’ve seen that we can’t rely just on listing websites.
If you don’t already have one, utilize tools like Lodgify to build one that resembles homes for displaced people or healthcare staff rather than a website for a holiday rental.
It is a time to be innovative and optimistic.
It can be difficult to find success in this tough market, now is the time to do things differently and make sure that you are able to remain profitable and successful. One of the best tools to be able to do this is with a vacation rental channel manager. With one of these, you are able to connect to multiple listing sites, all while having your calendars seamlessly synchronized together.