Quality vs Price when deciding on short term rental furniture and furnishings?

[Mitch Nelson]

I have an STR property, a duplex that has no long term tenants in it. I have been renting on Airbnb/Vrbo for 9 months in 1 side of the duplex. For reasons I won't go into, I do not want to rent it as two separate properties, but will instead rent it as one larger one. The one half is already furnished and has grossed roughly $27k in the 9 months we have been doing this, but we now need to furnish the other half of the property.

We furnished the one side with Costco couches, mattresses, and cheap Amazon type decor. I don't mind doing that again, but I worry about the quality/durability, longevity, and cleanability of the items, mostly the couch. I can put mattress protectors on, but can't necessarily do that with couches and I don't feel like guest keep things clean or care about how hard they are on items. 

I have been scouring the web for reviews, recommendations, and tips for couches for STR's but I seem to be struggling. Rob on the podcast always says "Buy nice, not thrice" and I haven't been in the buy nice category so far. How "nice" should my furniture, mostly sofa's be? I looked at Lovesac sactionals as they have covers that can be laundered, and a few other zippered type sectionals, but compared to the stock $1700 sectional I bought from Costco, I am struggling to justify the 2-3x cost on purchase of a "nice" sectional to furnish this additional unit. Some of the nice ones I have looked at range from $4k to $8k for the sizes I am looking for. The cheap one I bought has been holding up so far, but I can't seem to pull the trigger when I think I should. 

Anyone have any tips, tricks, or recommendations on how to navigate this and have any recommendations on large sectional couches that are worth the investment?

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Mitch Nelson, so we furnished out lake house will all USA made furniture for the most part. All of it used off Craigslist, FB Marketplace and OfferUP.

For example we have a pair of Basset sofa/love seat. Dark green multi color paisley type of design. An equivalent Basset pair today would be near $7000. I got them for $50. They were in excellent condition and still look great.

The sleeper sofa is a La-Z-Boy. It was the most expensive at $200 but it was new, never used.

The dining sets were Thomasville and Ethan Allen. Both were under $100 for each set and the dining set included a buffet. One of the queen beds is a Thomasville Americana series that I got for free. Great shape.

I could go on and on as our house is 2700 sqft and was empty as the quarter.

The only new things we bought were the mattresses (Zinus 12" Green Tea), linens, towels etc.

I tell ya, if you have patience and are diligent, you can score massive deals on great furniture. I still scan the free section on CL and furniture sections on all sites just to see and there is still a ton of great stuff out there.