MTR in Baton Rouge?

[Lisa Bain]

Is anyone doing medium-term rentals in Baton Rouge? I'm getting ready to buy my first investment property and trying to figure out my market. Baton Rouge seems like it could work well because of the hospitals and university, but I would love to hear about people's experience with MTRs in the area. Is there solid demand? What neighborhoods are you investing in?

Thanks in advance!

[Bonnie Low]

Quote from @Lisa Bain:

Quote from @Bonnie Low:

You might start by looking at dashboard statistics on the Furnished Finder platform. This is probably the single most common booking site for travel medical professionals. While their data isn't perfect, it's currently one of the only sites catering exclusively to longer term furnished rentals. It will give you a general idea of demand for MTRs in your area. You can certainly try calling HR departments at local hospitals but very few want to talk to you unless you have multiple properties to offer. Most travel medical professionals prefer to accept the per diem in their contract and then find their own housing so the HR departments rarely place their travelers. You can also just enter your city in FF and select some dates and search as if you were a potential guest. This will give you an idea of how many units there are, how booked they are and what kind of features, amenities and quality the competition may have. I strongly recommend you run the numbers as an LTR when you do your underwriting so you have a fall back strategy if needed or if you decide running your MTR is more hands on than you thought it would be or are comfortable with. If the numbers work as an LTR, you can consider any additional rents you may get from using it as an MTR as bonus. 

 Hi Bonnie,

Thanks for this info - super helpful! I have looked at the Furnished Finder dashboard, but I'm not sure exactly what makes a strong market. Is there a certain number of searches/page views that I should be looking for? For example, Baton Rouge shows 17,000+ map searches and housing requests in the last 12 months. That's lower than some other cities I've looked at, but the Baton Rouge area is also a smaller population than some of those more major cities.

Appreciate your insight!

Lisa

 There is a stat on FF that will tell which cities in your state are getting the most searches on FF. This gives you some idea of the interest. For example, we are buying in Ohio. The Cleveland Clinic is a HUGE world renowned medical facility with many associated campuses so I naturally assumed demand would be highest in and around Cleveland. According to FF the #1 city in Ohio is actually Cincinatti. That surprised me. This was a 2021 statistic so that may no longer be the case, but it was helpful all the same. I do think that the popularity of FF is growing. Initially it was mostly travel nurses using the site. But more and more people are looking for furnished housing and it's more broadly used. That's a good thing for hosts as you're reaching a broader demographic. It's just still not a great platform and it shouldn't be confused with an OTA (Online Travel Agency) like Airbnb. It is NOT a booking platform. It's simply a lead gen platform. That surprises a lot of people. It could use a lot of feature upgrades IMO. Messaging in particular is very slow and wonky. After initial contact via FF I immediately move off platform or messages get missed or take forever to get through. Lots of room for improvement, but I've been using it exclusively and staying full so it does work.