Similar but different—like everything else moving costs are high. When we moved Dad from his farm to his condo I priced moving his furniture against buying new. It was cheaper to purchase new furniture than to move the old.
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Yep, it always amuses me when a property is for sale and it says “Bonus, you get it fully furnished!” or even “Furnishings also for sale if you make an offer!”
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It’s particularly amusing when I see the furnishings and think, “Uh, no thanks. They’re ugly. Keep them or dispose of them, please.”
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Yes, turnover every 30-90 days, more money, easier to keep clean. Do guests’ laundry weekly so you can spot check the room.
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That I could handle. It’s having a whole house rental that makes me nervous.
Does anyone here perhaps do a monthly safety check (detectors, filter changes, etc.) for guests staying over 30 days as a way to spot check and reduce liability?
I think I’d require housekeeping (not me) every 2 weeks but they’d have to use my helper. I did have someone stay almost a month once who asked for a housekeeper and another month-long stay who offered to use one if I didn’t feel comfortable they’d do a good job. They did fine but in future I’d require the housekeeper for longer stays as they didn’t wash sheets/towels at all. Guest would pay if booked on platform. Off platform I’d work it into the price.
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this is your answer. I’d use a cleaning service, mine, and add it into the price of the LTR. Non-negotiable that it’s part of the booking. That way no one can argue or if they say they want to save $200/month (or whatever amount), you can state it’s non-negotiable. That will weed out any issues.
We check the smoke and CO detectors quarterly and do a general inspection at that time if we think we need to - the front entrances to our apartments go straight into the kitchens so it’s easy to tell right away 
When we’ve had trouble tenants (they weren’t from FF but from Zillow) we gave notice and did inspections as needed. It is legal in my state for a landlord to enter (with proper notice) for routine inspections. In Texas, it is legal but only if it’s included in the lease, so make sure that you have a clause for routine inspections in your lease. And always give proper notice, which is 24 hours in TX. Both of these things (inspections and notice) vary by state and sometimes by city so everyone should check their local laws. Our lease additionally requires any damage or cleaning needs found in an inspection to be corrected within 24 hours and our state statutes support this, YMMV.
Landlord insurance is how you would cover liability for stays longer than 30 days (as opposed to STR or homeowners insurance).
Most of our FF stays are 3.5 months. They are tenants and we provide cleaning tools, vacuum, mop, etc but they do their own cleaning. We have no expectation that our white towels or white sheets will be usable for the apartments ever again after a 3.5-month stay, even when they are washed weekly. For one of our 2-bed apts, we give 2 sets of sheets/pillowcases. We buy our linens by the case so the cost is less, but I think if you’re buying sets that $60 sounds about right? (from google), so that would be $120 worth of sheets that we would lose on a 3.5-month stay and that’s about $35 per month added to the monthly rent and we’re covered.
Admittedly, @casailinglady 's situation is very very different because she rents a room inside her house but for a private unit like our apartments or your SFH, it doesn’t make sense to me to provide or require cleaning service to tenants. It may turn-off the best tenants, they already clean and they are looking for a temporary home, I’m speaking specifically to the FF crowd, and a temporary private home does not include hotel-like cleaning services, aka constant entry by a stranger whether it be the landlord or a cleaning service. And it does not make sense, to me, financially either. Your choices for requiring housekeeping every 2 weeks, I believe come down to these:
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You clean it yourself. It will take at least 4 hours every 2 weeks which, for 13.5 weeks adds up to about 28 hours of your time (and that doesn’t include sitting in traffic on I-35 or whatever your route is). Even if you only “paid” yourself $10/hour (which would be criminal) it would still cost about $280 - which is more than 4 new sets of sheets cost (I think you have 4 bedrooms?), which you will have accounted for in your rent anyway.
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You pay for a cleaning service. Whatever you pay for this cleaning service for 3.5 months is well beyond the costs of your linens and comes directly out of your profit.
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You require the tenants to pay for a cleaning service. You will have to lower your rent to accommodate the extra cost of renting from you, so again it comes directly out of your profit.
In any of these 3 scenarios, if you provide them with clean sets of sheets, you are now exposing multiple sets of sheets to damage instead of just the initial sets of sheets. Even though the initial sets of sheets are easily, nearly invisibly, accounted for in the rent, it is not practical to account for multiple sets switched out every 2 weeks.
My recommendations are:
- stick to FF (and relatedly don’t do LTR on Airbnb), Zillow if you must but do a thorough screening
- have a solid lease that includes entry by you for inspections (with notice of course) and has detailed cleaning expectations laid out with punitive measures (if a cleaning inspection is not passed then it must be re-inspected and then a tenant-paid cleaning service will be required if it doesn’t pass on the reinspection). An inspection will take less of your time, effort and money than a cleaning service and almost always, you’ll do one and be done with it, assuming you’ve screened your tenants well. Don’t be afraid to get rental references, that will give you the best information.
- take a large security deposit, at least one month’s rent, but 1.5 or 2 because it’s a SFH, there is no limit to how much security deposit you can charge in TX and everyone expects to pay a larger one for a furnished house
- You can also charge a cleaning fee for the moveout clean on FF in addition to a deposit. I prefer to take a larger deposit and give them the choice to clean it themselves, hire a cleaner or have it taken from their deposit.
- Stick to month-to-month leases. If you’re doing FF, it’s highly unlikely they’ll leave early and more importantly, if someone wants to break their lease they will regardless of the lease term so it’s best to 30 days because most people will adhere to 30 days but not longer. The imaginary security of having a longer term lease with a pretend guarantee of rent is indeed imaginary and ultimately only puts you in a bad spot if someone isn’t working out - it’s better to have the out since you can give 30 days for any reason too.
- And learn you landlord-tenant laws because they will be tenants, furnished or not, it’s the same.
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