Mid-term rentals have become a serious strategy for St. Louis investors. They are also not the passive income machine a lot of people think they are.
On a recent Buyers Club Live call, Suzanne Luther sat down with Matt and Rebekah Copeland, who run 27 mid-term rental properties across the St. Louis area, to talk through what actually works. Matt had quit his job about a month before the call to run the business full time. Rebekah’s background is in hospitality, which turns out to matter more than you would guess.
Here is what came out of that conversation.
Watch the full conversation
About 68 minutes with Matt and Rebekah Copeland, including audience questions from local investors.
What counts as a mid-term rental?
Anything longer than 30 days.
That number is not arbitrary. As Rebekah put it, the 30-day line is what keeps you out of short-term rental territory. Past 30 days your guest is legally a resident, which means no extra licensing, no lodging or sales tax on the stay, and far fewer municipal hoops.
That distinction is getting more expensive to ignore. Matt described owners in the City of St. Louis whose short-term rental properties are being reassessed as commercial rather than residential. One owner watched their tax bill go from $3,000 a year to $8,000 a year.
The numbers, side by side
Two real comparisons from their portfolio:
| Near the airport | Neighbor’s long-term rental: $1,700/mo · Their mid-term: $3,000/mo · Same appraised value · 90%+ occupancy over two years |
| St. Anne duplex | Inherited long-term tenant of 20 years: $600/mo · Identical 550 sq ft unit next door as a mid-term: $1,800/mo |
Furnishing runs them roughly $10 to $12 per square foot for a full property. Not nothing, but far less than the Instagram-bait spending that short-term rentals often demand.
Who actually rents these
The tenant list is broader than most investors assume:
- Insurance displacement. A guest displaced by last year’s tornado stayed 15 months at roughly 2x market rate, paid by insurance. Another, near Dogtown, lost their house to a water main break and a fallen tree and will be in place over a year.
- Construction crews. Often booked in blocks, often extended.
- Traveling medical professionals. Travel nurses are the famous one, but that is only about 20 to 25 percent of their business. Residents and research fellows at WashU matter just as much.
- Relocating professionals. Boeing is moving its defense headquarters here and adding roughly 1,800 jobs. Those people need somewhere to land before they choose a neighborhood.
- People between homes. Twice in one year the Copelands housed families who sold faster than their new build finished. Both expected 60 days. Both stayed five months.
- Digital nomads and repeat guests. One splits the year between Spain and the US.
A pattern runs through all of it: guests almost always stay longer than they plan to. Three-month leases turn into six, then nine.
The part most operators miss: B2C versus B2B
This was the sharpest insight of the call.
Most mid-term operators run a business-to-consumer model. They list on Airbnb, VRBO, or Furnished Finder and wait. That works, but it makes you a hostage to someone else’s algorithm, and the supply and demand picture has shifted hard. Furnished Finder had roughly 30,000 listings when the COVID travel-nurse boom hit. It now has around 600,000. Supply caught up, and prices came down with it.
The Copelands built a business-to-business channel instead: direct contracts with insurance companies and construction firms. Matt’s example is almost comically low tech. They drive through extended-stay hotel parking lots, find construction trucks, look up the DOT numbers, and call the office manager.
The math is the point. Three crew members in an extended-stay hotel at $150 a night is $450 a night. That same crew in one of their three-bed, two-bath houses would rent for about $3,000 a month through a consumer platform. Priced against what the company is already paying, it is closer to $12,000 a month.
Same house. Completely different pricing conversation.
Two mechanics worth stealing
Keep the utilities in your name. Cap usage in the lease and bill back overages. Rebekah had one guest go over by $1.75 and decided it was not worth the bookkeeping. Keeping utilities in your name also means you keep the occupancy permit in your name, which means you are not chasing a fresh occupancy inspection every 60 or 90 days.
Confirm move-outs about three weeks ahead. Rebekah does not start marketing a property until she has confirmed a guest is actually leaving, because more often than not they extend. A one-page amendment saves weeks of unnecessary marketing.
Wear and tear runs the other direction
Counterintuitive, but consistent: mid-term guests treat properties better than long-term tenants.
Credit scores in the 750 to 782 range. Crews that leave at 6am and return at 6pm. Guests who have added things to the properties: mounted TVs, dimmer switches, a bidet. One construction-industry guest repaired a washer leak themselves and got credited on the lease for the receipt.
There is a structural reason too. With turnover every 60 to 90 days, plus lawn service and quarterly check-ins, you have eyes on the inside and outside of the property constantly. Very little goes wrong quietly.
Location and seasonality
Rebekah’s favorite submarket is near the airport, for the highway access to both downtown and the county.
Spring through fall is solid. December and January are the soft months. Broader cycles matter too, and they have watched bookings track election timing and general business conditions.
What this means if you flip or hold
Here is the practical takeaway for anyone using a hard money loan on a rehab: a finished property does not have to be a sale or a long-term lease. Furnished mid-term is a third exit.
If a flip is not moving at your number, a mid-term lease at two to three times long-term rent can carry the property while you wait for a better market, and it can do it without the licensing burden of a short-term rental. For BRRRR investors, stronger rents can change what the refinance looks like.
Just go in clear-eyed. As Rebekah said more than once: this is not passive. It is a hospitality business that happens to own real estate.
Build the team before you need it
Mid-term rentals lean on a bench: furnishing, cleaning between guests, maintenance, insurance, and tax guidance when your property classification shifts.
The Buyers Club Vendor Team is our vetted local list. Relevant here: Bright Door Hosting, which is Matt and Rebekah’s own mid-term management company, plus Homestretch Property Management and Midwest PG for traditional management, Landlord Ops for management software, Rentometer for rent estimates, Hub International and Shelter Insurance for coverage, On the Spot Cleans and 314 Quality Cleaning for turnovers, Nex Level Maintenance for repairs, Ricco Design for furnishing and interiors, Total Property for lawn care, and Tax Game Plan for the tax side.
Have a property that might work better furnished? Bring us the deal and we will run the numbers with you.
Want the full vendor list? See the Buyers Club Vendor Team.
Want to be in the room next time? Join Buyers Club Live, Wednesdays at noon.
