Need a recommendation for a rental management company (Austin, Taylor: apartments, leasing)

[TheTaytay]

I am going to be traveling for a few months next year. I would like to rent out my furnished house while I am away. I have heard that there often isn't a demand for furnished long term rentals, but based on some research, it looks like short term, or "corporate" rentals are always furnished, so I thought that might be a good option for me. Does anyone have experience renting out their house for a few weeks/months at a time? My dream scenario is to pay someone to manage my house as a short-term/corporate housing rental property while I am away, and I assume these services must exist, but I'm not sure where to look. If anyone has any ideas as to where I should look for that sort of service, or if anyone has a specific recommendation of someone who does that well, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[austin-steve]

I know many, many property managers in Austin, but I don't know any that offer the service you are requesting. The closest match would probably be a vacation rental management company because they are accustomed to handling furnished property and short stays. I don't think we have any of those companies in Austin that don't handle lake property though.

Frankly, if you're only going to be gone a few months, the risk of entering into such an arrangement isn't worth the rental income. The same holds true for any management company you approach. They'll say "no thanks" because it's too short a time period and not worth the setup and risk.

You'd be better off finding a friend, acquaintence or coworker to "house sit" for you.

Good luck,

Steve

[TheTaytay]

Thanks very much for the quick reply Steve. What you say makes a lot of sense. Part of the reason I was considering renting it is that I would consider renting for longer if the arrangement worked well, but I can understand why a management company might not want to enter into a short term arrangement. If instead I were to decide to turn my house into a long term rental, would you be able to throw me recommendations of good management companies?

Best regards,

Taylor

[austin-steve]

If instead I were to decide to turn my house into a long term rental, would you be able to throw me recommendations of good management companies?

Check www.narpmaustin.org, which is the Austin Chapter of the National Association of Residential Property Managers. But none of us will take a furnished property, so you still have that issue to deal with.

It's basically an "all or nothing" decision you have to make. You either want to vacate your home completely, removing all personal possessions, and lease it for a year or more, or you don't.

If you don't, the remaining options are ones for which limited professional help is available and you'd have to find a suitable match for your wants and needs. Not that it isn't possible, there just isn't a "one phone call" solution to your problem as there is for those who decide to lease out their vacant home long term.

You'd also have home owner insuranace issues to deal with, and have to find out how your insurance company would feel about you leasing it as a furnished short term rental. You'll find that they consider it a risky use of the property as well.

Steve

[iceshots]

When we relocated down here, the corporate housing was managed by a company called Amber Lodging. They are based in AUstin and their website is Welcome To Amber Lodging.. They have their own inventory of furnished apartments, but they occasionally get requirements that fall outside of that. They ended up placing us in a vacation rental so that we could get into the school area we needed to be in. You may want to contact them and see if something can be worked out.

If you did go this route, I would recommend placing all personal items in storage and just leaving things like furniture and basic house keeping items such as you would find in a condo.

[rg80]

Right on.. Also you could check out homeexchange.com (to trade homes w/others) or homeaway.com (to rent out your home by the week or month)