Renting to travel nurses is more complex than a traditional unfurnished rental, but the cash flow is much better. Depending on the restrictions in your area, the limits on this type of rental are usually less strict than for short-term (Airbnb or VRBO) rentals, and renting to nurses is much less stressful. My husband and I started investing in real estate in 2017. We have nine doors, six are traditional unfurnished rentals, and we recently added three travel nurse units.
My husband and I are not professional real estate brokers or financial advisors; this blog is for informational purposes only. Please do your own research.
Types of Units to Rent to Travel Nurses
Rent a room or suite in your house
If you want to make some extra money without purchasing a property, you could rent a room in your home to nurses, especially if you live close to a hospital. You can charge more if the nurse has a private bathroom and a small kitchenette.
One landlord I know, who lives close to a metro hospital, has a basement unit. The unit consists of a bedroom, bathroom, and living area with a wet bar. She extended the wet bar and turned it into a kitchenette with a ten cu ft fridge, convection microwave, coffee pot, and cooktop. She is able to rent the unit for about $2000/month when her son is at college. Time with her son and holidays aren’t impacted because she doesn’t offer the unit for rent during summer and winter breaks. Using this strategy, she is able to make about $12,000 per year renting out a space she doesn’t use six months of the year.
In most cases, travelers prefer private units, but they also rent out rooms. Another host I know rents out one of the bedrooms in her home and shares the kitchen and bath with the traveler. She charges $1200 monthly in a medium-sized city, about a mile and a half from a large medical center.
Buying or converting a property to Rent to Travel nurses
When purchasing or converting an existing rental property to rent to travel nurses and other healthcare professionals, it would be best to consider some factors. Most travel nurses’ schedules center around work and sleep. They don’t bring a lot of “stuff” with them, but many travel with pets. Some travel with their partners or another nurse.
When looking at properties for nurses, there are some factors to keep in mind.
- Finding a property that is close to hospitals or medical centers is vital.
- The property should be in a relatively safe area.
- Nurses sometimes have to to sleep at during the day, so the property shouldn’t be on a busy street.
- Properties with an otherwise strange floorplan, not much storage, smaller lots (less upkeep on the yard) or smaller units can work quite well.
- You will need to include utilities, internet and a smart TV.
- Many travel nurse renters want to bring a pet along, so it is best to install flooring that is easy to clean.
How to Find Travel Nurse Tenants
There are some Travel nurse Facebook groups, but the site most travel nurses use to look for housing is Furnished Finders. The Furnished Finders site has handy features for landlords, which allow potential landlords to gauge the demand for travel nurse housing in their area.
Furnished finder has several handy tools on the site, and I use them to check which market might be in need of furnished units for nurses.
How to gauge Demand for Units in a city
Here is a screenshot of one small city. As you can see, there were over 1500 searches last year for housing in that area. This could be a great opportunity to rent to travel nurses if there aren’t many units, or not good if there are many empty units available.
How to gauge How many units are available
It is important to find out how many units are available.If there are 1500 searches and 200 empty units, your unit could go empty.
You can search for available units from the homepage of Furnished Finder to see if there are many empty units near the hospitals. I usually zoom into an area within a few miles of the larger hospitals.
Shown is a screenshot of the same small city that appears to have a need for units. This city is a place I would consider purchasing properties to rent to travel nurses because there are not many units available, but there were 1500 searches for units last year.
That said, do your own research and consult your financial advisors and realtor before purchasing real estate.
For larger markets, Furnished Finders has a breakdown of units and pricing. The example shown is for a medium-sized city. As you can see, they break down the overall number of units (40) by rooms, private units, and hotel rooms.
It is essential to look at the properties in your area and make your cleaning fees and deposits in line with other units. We charge much less for the deposit than we do at our unfurnished rentals, but because the tenants are busy nurses who aren’t doing much cooking or entertaining, we see almost no damage to the units. The cleaning fee has covered cleaning the units, monthly clean-up of the foyer area, and landscape maintenance.
Our Travel nurse units
Last fall, we purchased a property that I knew would be perfect for travel nurses. It consisted of a 1680 sq foot, three bedroom, two bath, two-story Victorian house and a small, 720 square foot 2-bedroom cottage on one lot, connected by a carport. If we had kept the property as we found it, we could have gotten about $900 a month’s rent for the cottage and about $1200 a month for the three-bedroom house. The mortgage payment is about $1300/month, so it would have been an okay purchase if left as is.
Because of how the larger house was configured and the zoning, I knew I could split the two-story house into two units, furnish all three, and rent to nurses.
The cottage
We made some updates to the little cottage first. We had cute Boho-inspired tile installed in the bathroom (Boho is huge now, and units decorated mid-century or BoHo are at a premium). I wanted to create a fun, relaxing space for tired nurses to have a home away from home while on an assignment. We have gotten so many favorable comments about the cottage! We also painted the kitchen an accent color, and had the deck rebuilt and the exterior painted. In the meantime, I set about decorating with a mix of “like new” items from Facebook marketplace and new furnishings. Of course, we installed the most essential item when renting to travel nurses – blackout curtains.
Within a week of listing on Furnished finder, we got our first traveling nurse to move in. She was paying $1775/month and extended her 3-month contract another three months.
The Two-Story Duplex
It took a few more months to finish the front house because the contractor got COVID in the middle of it and had to take a few weeks off.
In the front house, our contractor and his crew and had the challenge of making the upper unit separate by creating a foyer and interior doors with keypad locks on both units.
Upstairs 2 Bedroom Unit
He completed the upstairs unit first. The original upstairs floor plan was 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. The contractor fashioned a beautiful kitchen/living space out of the front bedroom, installing new vinyl plank flooring, repaired the drywall and tiled the bathroom wall, refinished the clawfoot tub, painted everything and updated the lighting.
I chose a clean and classy blue and gold decorating theme.
Main Floor 1 Bedroom Unit
Once the upper unit was finished, our contractor started on the lower unit. We made the front room the bedroom and reconfigured the bathroom and laundry room. The laundry room was at the back of the house, so we enclosed it so both units could access it. The contractor added a killer mid-mod style backsplash and black granite counters, and I furnished it with mid-mod and Swedish furniture.
Cash flow
Both upper and lower units were rented within a week, the upper renting for $1725 and the lower for $1650. Since then, because demand is so high, I’ve raised rents by $100 on each unit, for a total of $5450. We allow one small pet and charge an additional one-time pet fee of $350. Even though we pay for water, electricity, gas, and internet, the ROI (return on investment) is much better than it would have been unfurnished.
Key takeaways for renting to Travel Nurses
The biggest hurdle we have faced is finding reliable cleaning and landscaping people to care for the units. Because we live an hour and a half from the property, it isn’t realistic for us to go down very often. The nurses we have had so far have left the units in great shape. I believe I’ve finally found a great person who will clean and take care of the outside. Fingers crossed!
That said, these three units are going so well that we plan to rent a cottage we own into a furnished nurse rental as soon as the current tenant’s lease ends. We believe that with an investment of about $3500 in furnishings, we will net an additional $1000 per month in rent on that unit.
I am excited about renting to travel nurses, and have found this niche to be beneficial for our cash-flow and real estate goals.
I plan to do some future posts about security features for units, decorating units to be stylish without breaking the bank, how to work payments and several other topics about travel nurse rentals. Please reach out if you have topics you would like me to cover, I would love to hear from you.