


When a string of hurricanes ravaged the East Coast this past fall and a cluster of wildfires burned the Los Angeles area in January, tens of thousands of displaced people suddenly needed shelter.
A Twin Cities-made website specializing in mid-term rentals — stays of longer than a vacation but not more than a year — hopes to help these refugees and others find temporary, but stable housing while rebuilding or searching for a permanent place.
Real estate investor Jon Wolf launched MiniStays just five months ago to cater to business travelers tired of hotels, digital nomads who could work from anywhere, families in transition or people who wanted a vacation home without the obligation of owning it.
Being a haven from natural disasters wasn’t an initial motivation; the timing was fateful.
“We’re helping solve a need,” Wolf said.
Wolf was a regular landlord before MiniStays but soured on it after a long-term tenant trashed one of his Minneapolis properties. The city’s strict restrictions dissuaded him from making it a short-term rental, and he was on the verge of selling it when someone suggested the idea of a mid-term rental (MTR): a monthly rental for those who need a furnished but ultimately ephemeral landing pad.
Wolf quickly rented the three-bedroom duplex to a traveling nurse who stayed for three months, left the place in perfect condition and paid about $700 per month more than he’d net with a long-term lease.
“I was completely hooked,” said Wolf, who promptly converted all of his long-term rentals into MTRs.
Less hassle, more profit
Demand for MTRs exploded, some in the industry say, during the pandemic, when workers suddenly had the freedom to live and work anywhere. Airbnb said stays of 28 days or more were its fastest-growing category by trip length, posting a 25% annual increase from 2021 to 2022.
In 2022, Airbnb’s long-term bookings were up almost 90% compared with mid-2019. And CEO Brian Chesky said on the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call last month that “17%, 18% of ... nights booked are longer-term stays of more than 30 days.”
“That’s going to become an even greater share of our business, I think, down the road,” Chesky said on the call.
Shona Lepis, a self-proclaimed MTR expert, said after years of prepping for new guests every few nights and the constant grind of short-term visitors, she turned all seven of her rentals in Portland, Oregon, into rentals for 30 nights or more.
“The turning point was COVID and high-maintenance guests,” she said. “You’re only as good as your last review, and you’re at the mercy of the platforms.”
She said regulations in cities that limit, or prohibit, short-term rentals are also pushing more property owners in Portland and other areas toward MTRs.
“That’s the really big driver,” she said. “In communities with a lot of regulations, it’s a natural switch to go the MTR route.”
Lepis, founder of Cedar Porch Investments, said mid-term rentals are more lucrative than a 12-month-or-longer lease and with far less hassle.
“You’re maximizing your cash flow without all the turnover,” she said. “It hits the sweet spot.”
Because of the recent destructive natural disasters leaving homes across the country uninhabitable, Wolf said he’s partnering with insurance housing specialists like ALE Solutions, which work with adjusters to find temporary housing for policyholders. In 2023, ALE Solutions and partner companies booked more than 30 million nights for displaced homeowners.
Wolf said Joy Pompeo, a property owner and MiniStays host in Ashland, North Carolina, recently helped a guest who lost a home in a hurricane. She had been offering her property on Airbnb for weekend stays, but when the hurricane hit the nearby Asheville area in late September, all of her reservations canceled.
MiniStays’ Community Project initiative, which helps displaced families find housing, connected her with a guest and paid for the stay through a GoFundMe campaign.
Wolf said four months after going live in October 2024, MiniStays already booked more than 100,000 reservations. The site now lists several thousand houses, condos and apartments in all 50 states.
Last month, Wolf said, the site garnered more than 40,000 pageviews with zero paid marketing.
“A lot of our growth,” he said, “has been organic.”