Vendor playbook

The Mid-Term Vendor Quality Audit

A four-hour tune-up for vendors managing 5+ furnished mid-term listings, covering portfolio health, pricing, response time, photos, and copy.

For vendors managing 5 or more furnished mid-term listings: corporate housing companies, professional landlords, and small property-management portfolios.

Identify the listings producing most of your inquiries, and the dead weight dragging the rest down.

Set a pricing-review cadence that captures the mid-term premium without sacrificing occupancy.

Cut median inquiry response time below 24 hours across the portfolio without hiring.

The Portfolio Health Snapshot (60 minutes)

Most underperforming portfolios have two or three listings dragging down the whole operation. Before you optimize anything, get an honest read on which units work and which do not.

Pull inquiry counts for every listing over the past 90 days. The bottom 30 percent needs attention, and the bottom 10 percent may need to come off the market.
Calculate occupancy rate per listing, meaning occupied days divided by available days. Anything below 60 percent over a six-month window is structurally underperforming, not just unlucky.
Flag any listing with zero inquiries in the last 60-plus days. Pricing, photos, or listing copy is broken, and it is usually all three.
Flag listings where the most recent lease started 90-plus days ago with no booking on the calendar. Optimize these first.
Look at lease-length distribution. If most of your bookings are 30-to-45-day stays, you are competing with vacation rentals. The premium tier of mid-term is 90-plus-day stays.

The Pricing Review (60 minutes)

Mid-term pricing decays quietly. A listing priced correctly six months ago is rarely priced correctly today. Run this review every quarter. Skipping it is the most expensive hour you will skip all year.

For each listing, pull the three most recent bookings. If you are still within 5 percent of what you charged six months ago, you have probably lost ground to inflation.
Compare each listing's all-in monthly price to one comparable furnished unit in the same building or ZIP code. Within 10 percent is fine; outside 10 percent means investigate.
Audit fees separately: cleaning, pet, parking, and utility caps. Fee creep across a portfolio is the most common silent revenue leak.
Find listings that have not been repriced in 90-plus days. These are the first to test a 5 to 10 percent increase on.
Add a recurring quarterly pricing-review day to your team calendar. The audit only works if it actually runs.

The Inquiry Response Audit (45 minutes)

Response time is the most measurable conversion variable in mid-term leasing. Across a portfolio, even a 12-hour median leaves real revenue on the table.

Pull your last 30 inquiries and calculate the median first-response time. Above 24 hours is a priority fix. Above 48 hours is active revenue loss.
Check inquiries that arrive on weekends and evenings. If those run slower than weekday inquiries, you have a coverage gap, not a response problem.
Audit your response templates. Generic "thanks for your interest, when would you like to view?" replies kill conversion. Lead with availability and the specific next step.
Find the team member who responds fastest on average, and make their template the portfolio standard.
For any listing with 10-plus inquiries and zero leases, the problem is the response workflow, not the listing.

The Photo and Listing Copy Pass (75 minutes)

Photos drive click-through; copy drives inquiry-to-lease. Both decay, and both are worth a focused pass before peak season.

Cover-photo audit: every listing's cover should be the living room or the most photogenic primary space. A bedroom cover underperforms a living-room cover across every mid-term platform.
Photo count: anything below 8 photos suppresses search ranking. Aim for 12 to 15 with a balanced room mix: living room, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and exterior.
Re-shoot any listing with photos older than 18 months. Furniture wear, paint changes, and dated decor show up in photos before anyone notices them in person.
Listing copy basics: open with the specific minimum stay ("90-day minimum," not "flexible"), state the all-in monthly total, and list the four amenities every tenant checks, meaning bed size, desk, in-unit laundry, and kitchen basics.
Add one neighborhood line, such as "3 blocks from the metro, 12 minutes to the hospital district." It is the most-skipped detail that consistently moves conversion.