Mid Term Rental Functionality

As more and more hosts are forced or choosing to move to mid term stays (28 days + stays) due to regulations, less work per stay, seasonality, etc. I would love to see more functionality added that specifically helps hosts offer mid term stays and still use OR. Would love to see different custom fields, rental agreements, rates, how payments are accepted (ACH options), and more based on type of stay (ST or MT), or how booking is created (Direct vs Channel).

This is actually a very timely post, as we are researching what features and improvements would be useful for supporting longer-term stays.

Just voted for this today and I also see this article was updated 2 days ago.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/mid-long-term-stays

The MTR market request could be even bigger.  Dynamically generating quotes that allow for a minimum of 30 nights between them.  If you get saddled with 29 day gab between two MTR dates you would be out of luck.  My idea is to build a financial model that would incentivize dynamically the dates of the MTR.

So basically It is $1.00 per day except the last day which you could work with to maximize it at 7-8 30 night MTR stays.   12 would be ideal but un-realistic in most markets.

I have a ton of algorithm ideas documented and happy to jump on a Zoom call and brainstorm.   Blending STR and MTR could be the best of both worlds and set OwnerRez apart.

One feature that I would love to see as part of this functionality:

Ability to set a rule that would automatically block X nights following a stay that is at least Y nights long.

Example:

• automatically block 1 night following a stay that is 30-60 nights
• automatically block 2 nights following a stay that is 60 nights or longer

Love that idea, Nathaniel! That might do better as a standalone feature request, as it has a variety of functionalities and uses for people (for all different lengths of stays). 

You got it - let's get some votes on it: https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/block-nights-after-a-booking-based-on-the-length-of-that-stay-to-allow-time-for-cleaning-after-long-stays#73857

Hi Jason,

I see the conversation moved away from your point however we wanted to make sure we got a response out to this.

For your algorithm ideas you've mentioned, I'd recommend writing these up as individual suggestions in our Feature Request forum, so other clients can vote up your ideas for new and improved features in OwnerRez.

The team had some internal discussion revolving your points as well, and the key takeaway appears to be that we'd recommend looking at Mutual blocking as a function as it addresses some of your points.

to summarize Mutual blocking allows you to setup units with individual minimum stay rules and availability rules and only market the STR unit when you reach a certain point. Here's what that may look like,

Physical Property: Mountain Escape

Properties in OwnerRez:
Mountain Escape A: short term rentals, allows 1 day stays

Mountain Escape B: long term rentals min stay is 30 days

Here's our overview article on the subject: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/combined-properties-blockoff-lockoff

~Caleb

Hi MTR people, 

I noticed it's been a while since this topic was updated so I thought I would nudge this. In addition to some of the ideas mentioned above, are there any integrations in the works?  Zillow, Apartments.com, Furnished Finder, Homads, HelloLanding, Craigslist?

Zillow seems to be opening the door for more furnished rental listings (when you list a property there, they now allow a lease term of "1 month" and have checkboxes for properties that are furnished).

I just got an update from the CEO of Furnished Finder and we are 12-18 months out for really any major change.   We might get iCal, but unlikely.

I have a meeting with another large scale company that has already built in integrations with Guesty, OwnerRez, Streamline, Escapia, and Track that might be willing to launch an MTR OTA like platform.

The major key in my mind is the pricing algorithm and avoiding a 29 night vacancy.

Interesting - looking forward to more updates.  It seems to me like the MTR market is ripe for consolidation with no clear leader (maybe Furnished Finder).  Zillow could easily step into that space.  They already have online application/ screening and e-leasing built out for long term rentals (for free!).  I would love to get more exposure but I'm not going to pay $149/year per listing to Furnished Finder.  It would be helpful if we could simply push some listing content (photos, descriptions) out to Zillow Rental Manager (or other sites), even without a calendar sync.  It's probably a lot more technically complex than I imagine...

For pricing, we've been successful using PriceLabs for both STR and MTR.  We have rules in PL to block short stays for dates that are far away (e.g. 30 nights are required for any dates that are 7+ nights in the future; inside of 7-nights, flip to a 2-night minimum).  The gradual last minute discounts are also very effective in driving people to book a 30+ night stay that includes more of the more heavily discounted nights.