The Landlord Lens - Short-Term Rental Collapse: Why Investors Are Going Mid-Term

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Short-term rental regulations are tightening across the country, and many investors are feeling the squeeze. From new licensing requirements to occupancy limits and outright bans, the short-term rental model is becoming harder to rely on in many markets.So where are smart investors pivoting?In this episode, MTR expert Jesse Vasquez breaks down why more real estate investors are moving toward mid-term rentals (MTRs) as a more stable and profitable strategy. We talk about how increasing regulation is reshaping the STR landscape, why mid-term rentals are gaining momentum, and how investors can adapt to stay competitive in today’s market.If you're wondering how to protect your cash flow and stay ahead of shifting regulations, this conversation is a must-watch.Follow MTR Mentor Jesse Vasquez:@therealjessevasquez

So I was actually doing some stats on this. Over the last year, there's 450 markets that been regulated. I believe that somebody that picks up a property should be able to do whatever the heck they want with it. Hey, everybody. It's Ava here with TurboTenant. I'm TurboTenet's partnership and events manager here, subbing in for John and Seamus while they're on vacation at the beach. But I'm really excited. We have a very special guest here today, Jesse Vasquez, who hosts his own midterm,

Rental Summit every year. And also is the founder of Air Venture Academy, which teaches investors how to grow their midterm rental portfolio. And I'm really stoked to talk to you today. There's a lot going on in the market right now. We've got some policy proposals, regulations, short-term rental regulations, 50-year mortgages, corporate landlord bans. I'm curious, how do you feel about everything? What do you think is impacting investors? What are you saying? Yeah, interest rates now are still pretty high. I mean, historically, they've been a lot higher than this. But I think right now is a great time to continue to buy property. The 50-year mortgage thing is coming around. I'm not a big fan of that. I don't think it's really helpful in a lot of ways. But I do think investors now need to be a lot

more savvy about how they're actually picking a property the way they're doing it. The other rate's going to be drop anytime soon. I don't know. In fact, with the policies and things happening right now with the government, I have no freaking clue on this stuff. But I do think that people should be very thoughtful on the sense of what they're actually buying. And these policies are potentially going to be helpful in ways, but I also see that these, these large-scale policies that you're talking about, there's some loopholes that could be really financially lucrative for a lot of people, especially getting into the midterm rental space. Yeah.

And I'm sure we're going to dive deep into those conversations here in a minute, but get out there, start buying stuff now. I think when we're in a market that has turmoil like this, the greatest investors pick up properties during spaces where there's this turmoil and the likelihood of something potentially negative happening. And Warren Buffett said this, like, buy when people are fearful. Yeah. You know, that's, that's a smart move to do.

And I think a lot of people don't lean into that often. So right now, in my opinion, is one of the greatest times to buy real estate because I think that things are a little bit kind of wonky and scary at the moment. But that's actually where the likelihood of you building something successful comes from. Yeah. And then short-term rental regulations, obviously very hot topic right now. Happening in the Denver market as well. How do you feel about them?

Yeah. So I was actually doing some stats on this. Over the last year, there's 450 markets. have been regulated. Oh, wow. So when you start to look, see things like that happen, so many people don't know what to do. In fact, last night we had a turbo ton of event where I was speaking. Yeah.

In Arvada, there's some regulations that are happening. And there was people that were worried about, you know, what's happening. And I think so many people don't realize that midterm rentals or temporary housing, actually you could skirt the regulations by doing that. In fact, I had a woman come up to me last night. She's like, I don't know what to do. If this happens, 30 days aren't going to work for me. I'm like, yeah, they actually are.

If you stay at a property and for 28 to 30, 30 days, you automatically become a tenant. And the way the laws look at that is that you are a tenant. So it actually surpasses the short-term rental space. So if you are in a market that is being regulated and you do 30-day stays or longer, the city doesn't view that as short-term. So it's a great way to pivot out of short-term rental regulations, which are happening literally all over the place. I'm curious, just for people who might not know what a mid-term rental is, can you give a overview, a definition, and why we should care? Yeah. So mid-term rentals, corporate housing, temporary housing, furnished housing, there's a bunch in terms for it. Choose whichever one you want here.

So basically midterm rentals, corporate housing is 30-day stays or longer. So you have short-term, which is one to 28 days. They consider that short-term. Anything from 28 days on the months is considered mid-term or corporate housing. And then you obviously have long-term, which everybody knows, which is long-term. The reason why people should care about mid-term rentals right now is because you can make more money than you can in the short-term rental space with some properties. And you actually, the way that I teach this, the way I talk about is to build relationships with companies. So they're supplying you year-round with new clients that are coming with as travel nurses or business travelers. So it's a great way to segment and actually build a business that you

own rather than being listed just on like Airbnb and VRBO, those types of platforms. So it allows you to create your own book of business rather than be dependent on a platform like Airbnb. If you're okay sharing with us here today, I'm curious what is your highest cash flowing midterm rental right now and how did you structure that deal? Yeah. So my highest cash flow Midterm rental right now is a property that I have in Aptos, California. I'm getting about $14,500 a month. Wow. I know. A lot of investors are just cash flowing between $100 and $500 a month. The mortgage is $5K on that property. Okay. Yeah. So water, sewer, gas, I'm all in about $5,500. But even then, like, I'm cash flowing like literally $9,000 and some change from one door.

That's killer. The family, they lost their home in a fire. So their house was completely devastated. So it's being built from the ground back up. They've been in the property for nine months now. And they have an extension for another probably six months. So the way that I got that is I actually talked to insurance companies and they're called relocation specialists. There's companies like ALE Solutions, CRS, Dan Housing. These corporations actually help families that lost their home and they create relationships with people like me and they send referrals and say, hey, we need a house for a three, two, in Aptos, California. What do you have available? So I go to my network, which is cool about last night is that if everybody connects, you can actually send these referrals to each other. I might not have

a five-bedroom house, but somebody in my community does. So I can refer them to that and say it's a $10,000 booking. I could say, hey, do you mind sharing 10% of that with me? I'll give you this referral. Of course, I'm going to make $1,000. If that's a 10-month lease, now I'm making 10 grand from literally just sending the referral. Easy, yeah. And I'm keeping the relationship with the company that's sending over to me, the relocation specialist, the family who's lost their home. Now they're in a comfortable house. And the reason why these companies make or they pay this much is because these corporations and companies know long-term renters don't want to actually, they don't want to deal with the three-month lease. They want somebody in there for a year, two years. They're used to that

traditional way of doing things. So we make more money because we're taking the risk of having vacancy. And that's the whole thing is that's where the leverage comes in. People are like, oh, this is like, I would never do that. It's crazy. Why would you only have one or two months in there? That's the whole game. It's like we're taking that leverage of what if with the of taking these relationships. And again, you got to create those relationships. It takes time. But, I mean, cash flowing over nine grand. So pretty freaking wild. That's awesome. If you're not doing midterm rentals, you need to get into it is what I'm hearing. But something I really love that you talked about last night and obviously just now is networking and building that network,

tapping into your community, leveraging it. I know a lot of folks out there might be hesitant to do that. I know you have a sales background. What would you recommend to folks that? that might be a little scared of reaching out, picking up the phone, making those connections. Yeah, this is the number one thing that I hear the most is people are like, I don't want to call. I'm scared. I've ever done this before. Yeah. You don't have to know what you're doing. And I think I talked about this last night where there's so many people that want to do it,

but they're just scared to pick up the phone and dial it. And that feeling in your gut of being scared of doing something, I feel like that's, you know, that's where you've got to lean into that. That's where you actually start to grow and to, you know, create these big businesses. In fact, I had a woman named Christine, she was in my class and my, program. She was this little Chinese woman. She has a very thick accent. She's like, I'm not going to do good at this because my accent's rough and it's hard and nobody's going to listen to me. They're not going to able to understand me. A year later, they have over a million dollars.

She leaned into her strengths, which was connecting and she's funny. You met her at the summit last year. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. She was cussing on stage. She was great. Yeah. Yeah. So she was terrified of this ability and we stopped. I stopped the entire class because she told me. She's like, I'm not going to be to do this, like I have a heavy accent, but I was like, if you create value for these companies, they're going to use you. A year later, she literally is doing a million dollars, which is wild. She's a corporate housing business in Vegas. So I think being able to lean into that is important, but you have to just do it. And I know it's one thing to just, you know, the Nike symbol, just do it, but you have to lean into that. And all you're doing is trying to serve for those

companies. So what are they doing in that market? You ask those questions, how often are they here? How much are they paying for hotels right now? And then you create a plan that's going to be better for them in the long run. That's literally it. And I think most people just overanalyze what that actually seems like or what that is. And they're scared. Yeah. No, that's great advice. And I can't remember where I heard it. It might have been from Austin Butler, but someone said that everything you ever wanted is on the other side of embarrassment and fear. And I think that's 100% true and just getting out of your comfort zone. Doing this right where we're doing right now, people are terrified to do this because they're worried about what their friends, their family, their neighbors,

or whatever he's going to think, but at the end of the day, like, they're not paying your bills. Who gives a crap? I'm going to ask you something a little bit hot topic. Do you think that midterm rentals can be passive? No. No. And why? I don't think because the part of the building the business is the phone calls and the connections,

that is absolutely not passive. And if anybody ever tells you a term, short term, anything's passive, they're full of crap. Because it's everything you do in the midterm rental space. If I start dialing companies today, that, connection that I make today is not going to pay me back for three to six months later and I have to stay consistent with it. Absolutely. And if I don't, then that's not going to be a business. Yeah. And I think people love the idea of something passive. When I first got involved with real estate, I was like, I'm going to get these checks in the mail. It's going to be awesome. But it's

totally. You got to do freaking work. Like it's monthly. Yes, you can give it to a property manager. You can do all that stuff. It can be passive that way. Yeah. But midterm rentals, somebody's doing work somewhere. And the likelihood of that being passive is absolutely not real. Not now. Totally. Yeah. Follow-up question to that. Do you think midterm rentals are for everybody? Absolutely not for everybody. Yeah. They're not for everybody. I think the great thing about midterm, short-term is that if you have an exit strategy, I think too many people think about one, this is what happened in Rado, the guy was talking to Angel, he's like, I bought the property just to short-term rent them. And they didn't think about multiple exit strategies from that first

purchase. Yeah. I think anybody listening to this now when you buy a property, yeah, evaluated for short, evaluated for mid, you evaluate it for renting by the room, have the extra strategies because of something like this happens, you got to be able to pivot. So I think too many people do not recognize that they need to have multiple different ways of getting into stuff. So if that is you, you need to make sure that you're thinking outside the box a little bit because regulations are going to happen, especially in a market that doesn't have regulations, there's the likelihood that's going to end up happening at some point. Okay, so I am curious, Jesse, do you think that midterm rentals and short-term rentals are potentially taking away inventory

from families or renters who are looking for long-term housing? I'll say this. There definitely are. There's a housing shortage in the U.S. There has been for the last decade or not longer. I forget the statistic and the internet correct me about this. Over the last 10 years, home builders have built less homes than ever before in the last hundred years. So the likelihood in the population in the U.S. has increased a lot more. So there's just a lack of property in the market. We could, we know that. But here's my quam with this, is that there's people that buy property that own one door, you know, which is hard to do. Yeah. And I believe that somebody that picks up a property should be able to do whatever the

heck they want with them. If that's midterm renting, short term renting, renting by the room, they're taking the risk of them in that liability. And it's hard to get these things. and I think a lot of people that I talk to are working class folks that are like doing the thing and this is the one thing that they could do that can bring revenue in instead of investing in a 401K or we talked about this last night remember yeah exactly yeah so I do feel like there's a lot of potential and growth especially wealth transfer with buying real estate but I don't like the government or city to dictate what somebody could do with their property it's just not my not my thing so I'm contrarying on that end I know a lot of people hate that and if that's you comment down below

like, yes, you're taking away from the, you know, from people. I do believe that. But again, at the end of the day, it's like, we're the ones paying for it. Yeah. And I think most people don't realize that it's working class people that are buying these properties that are finding a different way of doing it. And real estate's a long game. And it might work right now for a short term rental and you've got to pivot. And interest rates are so high right now. You can't buy a property even with 20% down and cash flow from it. Yeah. Or sometimes you can't even break even. So there's got to be different ways to make money. And unfortunately, you know, it does. take away from from from families but I'll say this on the midterm side corporate housing side we're

housing families who've lost their homes due to fire and flood yeah we're housing folks that are coming into our market that are doctors nurses that are serving our community people that are coming into to do construction to build up the community so if you want to look at this and drop it in a bucket of good and bad like I feel that this is a really strong way to build that community aspect and are we taking homes away or are we actually supplying people to live in these communities to have an ancillary way of staying in another property because of an unfortunate event. So for me, it's like, I love that feeling of being able to help somebody like that. I'm getting goosebumps talking about this because I felt that from people before. Yeah. And a little bit about what you and I were talking about

last night was I have a couple friends who work in government housing and do month to two months since in different cities. And I know for a fact they do not like living in a hotel room. They would way rather be somewhere that's comfortable and feels like home. And I think there's a lot to say about that well. Yeah. Yeah, living in a hotel, like there are 100 square few rooms. You're there for months. Yeah. Like who the flip wants to be in that? Like maybe a kitchenette. Yeah. If you're lucky. Yeah. But here's the crazy thing about this is that hotels like Marriott and Hilton, they're now focusing on 30-day stays. They're actually building their own brands. Interesting. Yeah. Around this. I wrote a substack article on this the other day. These hotel brands are actually

leaning into mid-term rentals. And you start to see corporate institutional capital, smart money, Wall Street money, get involved in 30-day stays, that brings market validity. So there's a lot of people like, oh, my gosh, hotel chains are going to take away from all the midterm rental operators. No, they're not not. Because these big, large-scale institutions, they're not boutique, they're not indie, they're not going to support the client in a way that you or I or Alex would ever be able to do. Absolutely.

And I think that people don't realize that us being these smaller independent operators, we have leverage tremendously over these large-scale companies. Yes, they have brand recognition, but us as individuals can do so much more for our clients than they ever will. Yeah, and I think that goes for long terms too. Obviously, it's what we specialize here at TurboTenet, but huge difference between that independent mom and pop, like between one and 10 properties, landlord and then your big corporate landlord. There's a immense difference in the way they're able to cater towards their tenants and be able to provide a community and safe and accessible housing. Black Rock bought extended stay in 2022.

Black Rock's the largest, freaking crazy. They're like, I call them evil because they own literally freaking everything. Yeah. So when you start to see institutional capital get involved in that, I tell people that, you know, institutions move silently. Like we see a lot of what they do, but now with the internet and media and all that stuff, when they buy into big scale corporate housing like 30-day state, Accident State America, which is the largest, you know, corporation that houses people for 30 days

or more, and you start to see smart money do that, the general public doesn't catch on to like five to seven years later. In 2022, I was like, this is going to be a big thing. Midterm rentals are going to be more. The institutions are seeing it. They're coming. And here we are. Like Hilton literally just released this new sweets collection. Marriott's doing the same thing. So all these brands are coming in. That's market validity. So like it doesn't freak me out. It actually gives validity to like. Totally. Midterm rentals will become an asset class in the future. And I feel like they're getting there right now. Something that we touched on a little bit just now was corporate landlords. So I'm curious, what do you think about the regulation?

against corporate landlords. I actually agree to that. Yeah. Because if I have any qualm with anyone, it's Black Rock, Blackstone, like the smart institutional, you know, companies that are buying. Yeah. I forget the statistic. It was like one in every 15 homes was bought by an institution in 2025.

And the internet correct me if I'm wrong on that. People love to see like, you got those numbers wrong. But that alone, like, when I feel somebody's taking away from people that are trying to buy housing, that's what I think of. It's not necessarily short-term rental operators. Those are people that make, you know, husband and wife comments. 120,000 a year, buying an investment, trying to figure out how to use that. But these institutional account companies, they have hundreds of millions of dollars,

and they're buying these properties as assets and changing them around. So that's who I don't actually, so I agree that they're not able, I would like them not be able to buy as many properties in the future. I think that's going to be more of the, I think that's going to help more with the affordable housing crisis than, you know, an independent person buying a short-term rental. You know what I mean? During COVID, and you guys might have noticed this, there was like this, influx of people that, like, hated landlords. They were like anti-landlars. Like, let's

screw these landlords over. We're not going to pay them anything. Do you remember that? Yeah. And I'm a tenant. So, yeah, I hear it all the time. Yeah. Like, we're not going to pay landlords or the devil. And I'm just thinking like, dude, if you actually knew who own this property, it's, it's a woman that's working two jobs to try to figure out to make this work. It's a, you know, husband-wife combo that barely make 100,000 year that saved enough money to buy this, you know, property. So totally, I think, you know, accidental landlords who might inherit. a property and just have one and, you know, don't really know what to do with it when a loved one has passed.

Which happens all the freaking time. Yeah. And I see that all the time. So it's like, I don't like that anti-landlord. I don't even like the word landlord. I don't even know where that came from. I think it's like an old historic thing. I think it's such a dumb word.

But I know teachers who are landlords. And I know the terminology is also huge conversation right now. Like are we owners, investors, landlords? So that's definitely a big one. People also hate short-term rental owners and their term. They're like, screw you guys, we're taking all the properties away. But in reality, Blackstone, BlackRock are doing like 20 X what any small investors is doing.

So it's like, go hate them. They're the people that you should be hating. No, 100%. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Last question. Really wrap it up.

What is your top tip for anyone who's watching this and wants to get into midterm rentals right now? Yeah. I would do this. I would make sure that you go on to Airbnb and go look at what 30-day rentals are staying. you can actually toggle the setting to 30-day minimums only, look and see what those properties are doing. Look at a property that's same and similar to what you have.

So if it's a two-bedroom, one bath in, you know, the Rhino District and here in Denver, go see what those are renting for. Put it out like right now. Right now we're in, um, a month or we're in February. I don't even know what we're in February now. Like look out, look at like April through June and just see what they're renting their properties for and start to get a good understanding with go on Furner's Finder do the same thing, see what's going on there, go on Virvio, VRO, look there.

And start to get a good understanding of what people are actually. renting their properties for. Go into Indy.com and type in registered travel nurse and then whatever city you're in and just see how many, you know, companies are hiring those clinicians in that market. Yeah. It's going to give you a good understanding. If you have a level one or level two trauma hospital, you're ready like in a good spot. There's a lot of travel nurses and doctors and residents that come to those spaces and leave. Like Denver, where I'm at now, new construction is happening here everywhere. These are high-rise buildings being built to have hundreds of employees that are working where they staying. Yeah. So you start to think about what's actually happening outside your

market and inside your market too. And what are these companies are staying there? So I would start to identify those things. Yeah. And start to put a number of like, okay, if I rented my property for 30 days on Airbnb, the similar property is doing 4K, I know that I could probably command 4K as well. So that's what would be my recommendation is start doing that, but also think about, you know, think about the bigger picture of actually creating a business where you're talking to these companies, you're creating relationships and they're actually serving you regularly rather than, you know, listing on the platform. So. Well, thank you. you so much for coming on the podcast today and chatting about midterm rentals. I hear you're also

looking at rentals in the Denver area while you're here. I am. Yeah. I'm doing that today. Yeah. I'm actually, I may be, I may, I may end up property here. That's exciting. Yeah, it's multi unit. And there's a lot of ADUs that are here now. Yes. I think that's a smart place. So I'm checking out a couple of properties that are one of them is a creative finance deal. Awesome. And the other one's something that's been sitting on the market for like a long time. But yeah, thanks so much. much for sharing all your insight. And if you want to connect with Jesse, you can check the caption and see how to connect with him. Make sure to subscribe if you want to see more of these types of conversations. And don't worry, John and Seamus will be back soon. But thanks so much.

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