Renting to travel nurses: a mid-term rental playbook

A furnished unit rented for 30 to 90 days, or a few months longer, sits between a vacation rental and a regular lease. Travel nurses are the classic tenant: they arrive for an assignment, need a place that is ready on day one, and leave when the contract ends. Here is a playbook for renting to them well, from the lease to the deposit to billing a stay that starts on the 10th.

What a mid-term rental is, and who rents one

A mid-term rental is usually a furnished home or apartment rented for roughly a month to several months. Travel nurses and other traveling healthcare workers are a big part of the market, along with people on work projects, families between homes, and anyone who needs a furnished place for one season.

Demand is real but it moves. Staffing Industry Analysts reports that travel-nurse staffing revenue fell in 2024 and 2025, though it remains above pre-pandemic levels. In practice that means you should plan for some gaps between stays rather than assume back-to-back bookings.

Check which rules apply to your stays

The length of a stay can change which rules apply. In many places, stays shorter than 30 days fall under short-term rental rules, which may mean a permit, registration, or lodging taxes. Stays of 30 days or more are often treated as ordinary residential tenancies, which brings your state's landlord-tenant law into play, including rules on deposits, notices, and ending a tenancy. The cutoffs and details vary by city and state, so check locally before you set a minimum stay. This is general information, not legal advice.

Where to find tenants

Mid-term tenants usually find housing through furnished-rental listing sites, hospital and agency housing contacts, travel-nurse communities, and word of mouth from past tenants. RentMerchant is not a booking site. It has no booking calendar and does not push your listing to other sites. Listing happens elsewhere; RentMerchant handles the lease, the deposit, and the payments once you have picked a tenant.

Size the lease to the assignment

A travel nurse's contract has a start date and an end date, and your lease should line up with it. Beyond the usual rent, deposit, and house rules, a mid-term lease should cover:

• Exact start and end dates, matching the assignment.
• An early end of assignment clause. Assignments get cancelled or cut short. Decide up front what happens: how much notice the tenant must give, what they owe for the remaining time, and how the deposit is handled. Write it down so neither side has to negotiate under stress.
• Extensions. Assignments also get extended. Say how an extension is requested, by when, and at what rent.
• Who may stay. Name every occupant, and state your guest and pet policies.
• The furnishings inventory, attached as an addendum (more on this below).
• Cleaning and turnover. If you charge for a final cleaning, state it clearly. Some places limit non-refundable fees, so check yours.

Send the lease for e-signature before the tenant travels, so the paperwork is done before the keys change hands.

Deposits for a furnished unit

A furnished unit has more to lose than an empty one, so a security deposit matters. If your stays count as residential tenancies, your state's deposit rules generally apply: possible limits on the amount, where the deposit is held, and how fast it must be returned with an itemized list of deductions. Our guide to security deposit laws by state is a starting point.

Bill the deposit as its own invoice, separate from rent, so both sides can see exactly what was paid for what. RentMerchant tracks the deposit against the tenant, so at move-out you know what you are holding.

Inventory and condition photos

The single best protection for a furnished rental is a record of what was there and what shape it was in.

1. Make a room-by-room list of furniture, linens, kitchenware, electronics, and anything else you supply.
2. Take dated photos of every room, and close-ups of anything already worn or damaged.
3. Walk through it with the tenant at move-in, or ask them to note anything you missed within a set number of days.
4. Repeat the photos at move-out.

Keep the signed inventory and the photos in document storage with the lease. If you ever need to deduct from a deposit, the record is already there.

Collecting rent when stays do not start on the 1st

Assignments rarely line up with calendar months. You have two clean options.

Option 1: bill on the move-in day. Set recurring monthly rent on the tenant's start day, with an end date that matches the lease. If the stay starts on the 10th, rent is due on the 10th each month, and the schedule stops on its own when the stay ends. Recurring rent can be set for any day from the 1st to the 28th.

Option 2: bill on the 1st and prorate. Bill the partial first month and the partial last month as one-off invoices, and let recurring monthly rent cover the full months in between. Here is an example, with the daily rate based on the number of days in each month:

There is more than one way to calculate a daily rate, so state your method in the lease. Recurring rent in RentMerchant is monthly only; if you want to bill weekly or every two weeks, you create one-off invoices for those.

Either way, tenants pay online by bank transfer or card, which suits someone who may be paying from another state. They can turn on autopay with a card. Every payment gets a receipt, and email reminders go out before and after the due date, so you are not texting a nurse between twelve-hour shifts to ask about rent.

When an assignment ends early

If the tenant's contract is cancelled, your early end clause does the work. Confirm the notice in writing, through messaging so it is dated. Then pause or remove the recurring rent so no further invoices go out, bill any amount the lease says is owed as a one-off invoice, and handle the deposit return on your state's timeline. Because everything is already on paper, an early departure is an administrative task, not a dispute.

Between stays

Gaps are part of mid-term renting. Use them for deep cleaning and repairs, and ask each tenant to report problems through maintenance requests during the stay, so you are not discovering a broken dryer on turnover day. A short list of what each tenant reported, and when it was fixed, also helps when the next tenant asks how the unit has been kept.

How RentMerchant fits

RentMerchant handles the part after you pick a tenant: the lease and e-signature, the deposit, recurring and one-off rent invoices, reminders, receipts, maintenance requests, and messaging. It does not list your unit or manage a booking calendar. The Free plan covers up to three properties, and the fees page lists what each payment costs; by default the tenant pays the fee and you receive the full rent. See the mid-term rentals page for how it fits furnished stays, or the seasonal rentals page if your units also host snowbirds or summer guests. You can create a free landlord account before your next tenant arrives.