To furnish, or not to furnish

[Carlo D.]

I'm about to close on my first rental property in NYC. I plan to do some cosmetic upgrades after then rent it out.  Is it better to rent it out furnished or unfurnished?

[Carlo D.]

Quote from @Eric Jubeck:

Quote from @Carlo D.:

Quote from @Eric Jubeck:

Hey Carlo, that strongly depends on your strategy and market. Obviously if its a STR or MTR you will need to furnish. I'm assuming you're doing a LTR here, so what does your market say considering you're in NYC? Is this property in a high rise building? Something where it would be a pain for tenants to constantly move in and out of with furniture and deal with freight elevators and scheduling times with building, etc.? If so, offering furnished could probably be ideal for that situation...but again, it depends...

 Eric,

I did quick google search and it gave me the answer. My follow up question would be what time frames qualify as MTR vs LTR? Thank you in advance!

 Hey Carlo, the MTR would typically be anything for minimum 30 days or multi-months, like here in FL for example we do a lot of seasonal rentals of a few months at a time. Some even do furnished MTR just over 6 months to avoid tourist tax as well. Whereas LTR is your typical long term rental with an annual lease term in place. What will be your strategy here? And what type of property is it?

 Hey Eric, thank you again for being so responsive. My strategy is to just basically hold it and rent it out. It's a coop and I purchased it cash.  

With these high interest rates, the math just wasn't working. But I also believe that now is the time to invest in something.  My personal thesis (which is not new and is actually quite a common view) is that with interest rates basically doubling, but real estate prices not going down, now is the time to buy.  The fed lowering the rates in the future (no matter how long that may be) or even a change in their language during fed meetings that hint at a reduction can cause a surge in demand thus increasing property prices even more. 

So my long term plan is to just hold it and cash flow from it. I never intend to sell it. I intend to leave it to my kids when I'm gone. It's held in an LLC which is owned by my family trust. If and when rates go down, I can just access the equity then.

Sorry if that was much more detail than you asked for. But I wanted to give you a better picture in hopes that you'd have some insight that I might have missed. 

Thank you again.