This Furnished Rental Site Is Way Cheaper Than Airbnb -- but There's a Catch

This site saved me thousands of dollars on furnished rentals.

Rental prices are already expensive when you go the traditional route of signing a 12-month lease and bringing your own furniture. If you need a furnished unit with a shorter lease, that's when things get really expensive.

This makes it difficult if you're a traveling professional or a remote worker looking for flexible housing options. This year, my wife and I experienced that firsthand. We spent some extended time visiting the United States, so we had to look for furnished rentals with monthly rental periods.

The first place you'll probably check in this situation is Airbnb. While it has tons of options, it isn't cheap. Then there's Vrbo, which somehow has even higher prices. But there's one site where rates are much lower and don't include any frustrating service fees. It's called Furnished Finder, and it helped me get reasonable deals on three rentals this year, even at a time when housing affordability reached its lowest level in years.

What is Furnished Finder?

Furnished Finder is a short-term housing platform that started in 2014. It's designed for travel nurses and other business travelers, but anyone can use it. According to its website, it has over 70,000 property listings.

Unlike other sites that handle every step of the booking process, Furnished Finder is more hands off. It provides a platform for property owners to advertise available units, which could be a room, an apartment, or a house. It also has partnerships with some hotels. Prospective renters can then contact owners about available units.

Rental contracts and payments are handled between property owners and renters. Furnished Finder does, however, offer a platform called KeyCheck that provides landlord tools, including online rent collection, tenant screening, and custom leases. Some property owners use this, while others manage everything themselves.

Each property has a minimum stay, which is set by the owner. Most of them have either a 30-day or 90-day minimum. I've also seen some with a seven-day minimum, but they're rare. Furnished Finder focuses on providing monthly rentals, so it's not the best option if you're looking for a vacation rental to spend a weekend.

Overall, it's not as convenient as platforms that handle booking and payment, but it's a lot easier on your bank account. To give you an example, in the cities where I rented, quality studio apartments on Airbnb cost about $3,000 to $3,500 per month. On Furnished Finder, I found one-bedroom units for $2,000 to $2,500.

How to use Furnished Finder

The Furnished Finder platform definitely has a clunkier user interface than Airbnb, but it's not too hard to manage. Although you can browse properties without an account, you'll need one to contact owners. You can sign up for an account by clicking the "Login" button.

To search for housing, use the search form to enter your destination, select a move-in date, and set your maximum monthly budget. Furnished Finder will provide a results page with everything that's available within your budget before or around your desired move-in date. There are also some ways you can adjust and filter the search results:

• Sort by availability or price
• Filter by rooms, entire units, or hotels
• Set a minimum number of bedrooms
• Adjust the map to only see units in a specific area

Each property's page has more information provided by the owner. If you're interested in renting it, you can send the owner a message or a booking request. Some owners also provide their phone numbers.

Once you've gotten in touch with the owner, you can ask any questions you have and set up the rental. However, actually getting in touch with property owners can be easier said than done, and that's one of the main difficulties with using this platform.

The biggest drawback

Before you get too excited about what you see on Furnished Finder, it's important to temper your expectations a bit. Many property owners either don't actively manage their listings or don't keep them up to date. Every time I searched for rentals, there were several owners who simply didn't respond. Others told me the units were already rented, despite being shown as available on the platform.

These kinds of issues happen on other rental platforms, like Airbnb, too. But I encountered them a lot more on Furnished Finder.

If you use Furnished Finder, I'd recommend reaching out to several owners at a time. This gives you much better odds of finding something.

There's also a good workaround for this issue. Furnished Finder has a housing request feature that allows you to fill out a form and specify what you're looking for. The site sends your request to all the property owners in your search area that match your specifications. Then, owners who see the request contact you. I made a housing request once and got quite a few messages, so it can help you find available options with responsive owners.

My go-to for affordable furnished rentals

Furnished Finder has its flaws. The platform isn't the most polished, some listings have unresponsive owners, and it's a bit of a hassle to sort out rental contracts and payments with owners.

Those are all minor issues, though, especially considering how much money you can save. I'm sure I saved at least $8,000 thanks to Furnished Finder, as I stayed at rentals I found there for about eight months, and they were easily $1,000 per month cheaper than comparable places on other sites. It's the number-one site I'd recommend if you need a furnished rental for a month or more.