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How Corporate & Midterm Rentals Beat Airbnb for Cash Flow

By January 19, 2026Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Brian Biernat discusses the furnished housing market, focusing on midterm rentals and the strategies for attracting corporate clients. He emphasizes the importance of marketing, maintaining a strong online presence, and building relationships with insurance companies for displacements. The discussion also covers acquisition strategies for real estate and the differences between short-term and midterm rentals, highlighting the need for cleanliness and trust in the rental space.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Brian Biernat (00:00)
    And you also need to be easy to do business with. Like we just picked up an insurance day with a client. They moved in last night. ⁓ But, you know, they were working with CRS, which is one of the insurance specialists that we work with. And when I called the lady, like I know exactly what they need. I made it very easy for her and she was very excited. She’s like, need to put my name and number down and you have

    If you get anything in Jackson, any displacement, I say, need to be your first call or text and responding with urgency is key, right?

    Dylan Silver (02:08)
    Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Brian Biernat is in the furnished housing space in Jackson, Mississippi. He’s got a background as a telecom executive and an Air Force veteran. You can find him online at convenientcorporatehousing.com. Brian, thanks for taking the time today.

    Brian Biernat (02:27)
    Hey, thanks for having me.

    Dylan Silver (02:29)
    Great to have you. And when we talk about the furnished housing space, there’s a lot that comes to mind. And we were talking about some of the different segments before hopping on here. So for our audience and for myself, what really is the scope of furnished housing?

    Brian Biernat (02:47)
    So furnished housing, so we have two categories, right? have short-term rentals, which is usually under 30 days. And then you have all the rage now is midterm rental, which is over 30 days. And that’s essentially how you define them.

    Dylan Silver (03:02)
    When we talk specifically about midterm rental, I think there’s a lot of folks who are looking at this space and are bullish on it because you have more ⁓ reliable business, longer tenants, right? But then also, too, these are nurses, these are traveling professionals. So you’re not worried about delinquencies because if they lose their job, then the company will need to bring someone else in,

    Brian Biernat (03:27)
    Yeah, so I think a lot of people because of COVID immediately assume nurses and nurses are in some markets, it’s a very good here. Not so much. We’ve had a few and you know, if you have smaller properties that will tend to attract them. We focus more on we have some two betters. We focus more on three, four and larger homes and we try to attract our goal.

    is really insurance displacements, which we have picked up like half a dozen in the last couple of weeks. And we do, we do a lot of blue and white collar contractors. There’s a lot of stuff going around in Jackson, Mississippi right now. Amazon’s building seven data centers, Aria is building four or five and to the east of us in Rankin County. There, there re there, there’s a guy that’s redoing the whole Metro Metro Center mall off of highway 80 and 220. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff going on.

    Dylan Silver (04:01)
    wow.

    Brian Biernat (04:24)
    in the area as far as contractors. So we’re really not a, we’re not a vacation market. We’re not this ink Pensacola, Perdido, know, 30A. This is like tier two, know, Jackson’s about, know, Jackson Metro is probably 400K, Jackson itself is probably, you know, 190, but it’s a tier two more, it’s business, right? Convenient Corporate Housing is our name and we focus on corporate clients.

    Dylan Silver (05:38)
    Now, when we talk about contractors and folks, blue collar who are in and out of that area, the thing that comes to mind for me is, well, how reliable is that? then also too, when you’re dealing with someone who’s gonna be there for potentially months at a time and then they leave, how quick is the next person to come on? And during that…

    break in between, would you put it out as a short term rental while you’re waiting for people to come in? How do you manage vacancies?

    Brian Biernat (06:10)
    So all our properties are listed on our website in Verbo, Airbnb, Google Vacations, all other places. We do a lot of proactive marketing. So as I was saying, always be marketing, right? So whether the house is full or empty, you’re always marketing. And so we do pick up bookings to fill. But honestly, this time of year, it’s good to have an open calendar because all these

    Contractors, right? These electricians I’ve got. I also am tied in with what I call connectors. They’re people that own zero property, but they’re in the hospitality business and they have contacts. And when they get a booking in my area or request, I can fill it. And so, you know, they add their fee on top. You know, get our amounts and everything and we get the house filled. And so we have some of those as well.

    But I would say, you it’s, have to have a Google presence. We’ve had a website that’s been optimized for four or five years. And honestly, in the last two years, my goal was to drive four years ago. My goal was to drive 80 % of our bookings off of Airbnb and Verbo. And we’re at 70, a little over 70 % now. So we don’t rely on those OTAs as much as some people. Our business has evolved. Like I said, we’re, you know, we’re focused on.

    Dylan Silver (07:26)
    Good.

    Brian Biernat (07:36)
    those contractors. So we get a lot of word of mouth. We get a lot of people hitting our website, finding us on Google searches, you know, previous relationships, contacts from other furnished housing providers that have smaller properties that can’t house everybody. I got a call Sunday night from a friend of mine. He he’s got a couple of one and two bedrooms and he’s like, look, I got a guy that needs 25 properties. He’s from Florida.

    He goes, I’m going to hook you up. I’m like, great. I said, I’ve got a house right now. We’re finishing up and we can sleep between six and nine people. you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, you’ve got to be, you gotta let people know what you do, right? You gotta be in the business. You gotta let them know what you do. So always be marketing. That’s what I would tell you.

    Dylan Silver (08:15)
    Yeah.

    Yep. Yep.

    You gotta have that advertising space in people’s heads when they’re thinking about, you know, where can we go to, right? Or who do we know that can house somebody?

    Brian Biernat (08:28)
    Yeah.

    And you also need to be easy to do business with. Like we just picked up an insurance day with a client. They moved in last night. ⁓ But, you know, they were working with CRS, which is one of the insurance specialists that we work with. And when I called the lady, like I know exactly what they need. I made it very easy for her and she was very excited. She’s like, need to put my name and number down and you have

    If you get anything in Jackson, any displacement, I say, need to be your first call or text and responding with urgency is key, right?

    You can’t wait. You can’t sit on your hands and go, well, it’s after five o’clock. You know, I’m not going to do that. It takes two seconds to send a text message, right? And you don’t say. And the benefit of and I tell this to people all the time, I’m like, if you’re in the first space, first housing space, you don’t have a website, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.

    Dylan Silver (09:07)
    Yeah.

    Yeah, I mean, people don’t answer their phones, right?

    Brian Biernat (09:26)
    you’re at a huge competitive disadvantage because when someone reaches out to me, I can quickly go to a pro, I can look at my calendar. I can quickly grab a link to the property. I can shoot it to them on text or email, give them all the rates and I can do that in two minutes watching a football game.

    Dylan Silver (09:45)
    versus someone else who yeah has to go find

    Brian Biernat (09:47)
    versus someone who

    doesn’t have a website that has to, you it’s all about speed, right? Speed and convenience, you know, just like in a wholesale space, right? Speed, convenience and price. You can have two, but not three.

    Dylan Silver (10:33)
    want to ask you specifically about something we were discussing before before hopping on here, pad split, right? I’ve heard. Yeah, I’ve heard this as a great opportunity. I haven’t personally done a pad split. But I know people who have and have raved about it. Does pad split have have a time and place, you know, in the furnished housing space? Or is that tricky? Because now you’re managing, you know, booking out individual rooms at a time versus a whole unit.

    Brian Biernat (10:39)
    Yeah, totally.

    So I don’t think it’s a hybrid, right? It’s a hybrid between a long-term rental and a furnished rental. So it’s not really in the furnished space per se. It’s a rental. But I think what it does is it serves a niche market for people that are, well, it’s affordable rental housing because you’re not paying any deposits. You get a nice house, clean, quiet, safe area. You pay $100 application fee. You get all your utilities, internet, washer, dryer, everything you need.

    You know, Jackson, our market is, not a core market because we don’t have 150 doors yet. So we do pad split anywhere, but pad split, you know, does like three different background checks on the client. They receive all the money and they pretty much manage that member relationship. If you get involved from time to time, but like I was telling you offline, it’s actually less hands on than our furniture and a business. But it’s, think, I think it’s, I think it’s going to be something that’s really going to start to grow big time.

    Dylan Silver (11:55)
    Now when we-

    I’ve seen it, I’ve seen multiple people talk to me and the first time that I heard it I said, that sounds like a great idea. You’re basically just able to take full advantage of every square foot in a home, right? And so instead of having a home that you’re renting out, you’ve got potentially several rooms and you’re able to get more out of it. And then you’ve got the power behind the brand of PadSplit. I do wanna ask you specifically though about the acquisition side of the business. And when you’re looking at,

    Brian Biernat (12:21)
    Absolutely.

    Dylan Silver (12:30)
    ⁓ you know homes in the Jackson area. Are you looking on market, off market? Are you working with, you know, folks who have distressed property? What’s your acquisitions process like?

    Brian Biernat (12:41)
    All of the above. So I have my own VA and so we source our own deals, right? I have my son, my partner. So we’re mining three different zip codes right now. We’re kind of getting our ducks together and they’re going to start ⁓ robustly texting and running those campaigns and my VA is going to be doing the follow-up. So that’s one. My name’s out there everywhere. Everywhere I go, I talk to investors. I have a presence on social media.

    I have tons of wholesalers and other investors reaching out via DM, text, email. I have local wholesalers calling me in the area. And I get MLS stuff, right? So I’ve bought houses off MLS. I’ve got a couple of realtors I work with. I’m on some daily emails that come in, houses 250 and below.

    If you don’t ask, you don’t get. So just because it’s on the MLS doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a good deal. You can find good deals. You have to work it. You have to get it at your number, right? And you can’t compromise your number. And we just had this discussion about, we’ve been typically 70 % of the RE- repairs and now we’re going to drop it down to maybe 65 because we want to get a little better deals.

    We don’t need a lot of deals. just going to, we just want to do, you know, four or five, six a year, you know, to add to our, you know, our different port or different cash flowing opportunities that we, that we jump into. So.

    Dylan Silver (14:14)
    For folks who are looking at, let’s say the short term rental space and they may be thinking like, hey, this is gonna be a great cashflow opportunity for me. The downside to that is, you could potentially have lower quality tenants, they might not be as scrutinized as far as from a background perspective, but then also too, you’re not having the kinds of consistency that you’re seeing with longer form housing, whether it’s a year to year lease or

    you know, midterm. For folks who are thinking about like which space to get involved in, do you have any feedback on which segment might be best for folks?

    Brian Biernat (15:36)
    Well, I mean, obviously, if you’re just getting started, know, you what I would recommend is go, go, go on Airbnb, look and see where the properties are at. Where do people have properties? Because where they have properties is there’s a reason for it, right? People have those areas are generally places people want to go. And, you know, if you don’t, if you’re just getting started, you know, short term is probably the way to start, right? Because you can get your property out there. You can start getting a few bookings.

    You know, everyone has different strategies. We were never a single night stays. We were, we started with two. think our minimum now is four. Sometimes we bump it to seven or 10, but, start on, start with a short term. know, you can, you can do master leasing or rental arbitrage. If there, if the rent number works, then your capital outlay is less. You can go get you an 18 month, 0 % financing credit card, which furniture on there, you know, and, and let it, you know, and, start, that’s what we would do. You we started out.

    Dylan Silver (16:28)
    Yeah, yeah.

    Brian Biernat (16:33)
    We had a little money. We put a few units up and get to that magical $600, $700 a month net and pay down our furnishings and then go do another one. So I think short term is probably the better way. Midterm, what we call midterm rentals, that takes a little time. We started doing insurance displacements in June of 2022. We’re now in January of 2026.

    And it took us like five months to get our first one. And that’s a relationship. It’s kind of like raising private money. You don’t go out on Facebook and, hey, I need money. need a lot. No, you have to build it through trust and demonstrated experience.

    Dylan Silver (17:04)
    John.

    Right, you know, and when we

    talk about the insurance and people displaced by some type of loss of property or their home, right, that’s ⁓ going to require not just that to happen, but then also the trust from the person that’s the adjuster or the insurance company themselves or the homeowner who has to somehow be able to find your property. And so

    you kind of do have to thread that needle, right? If something has to happen, then you have to have the relationship in place and the property’s gotta be available, right?

    Brian Biernat (17:50)
    Yep, that’s right. And like I said, we just had a bunch of fires over the holidays. Christmas trees burn, fireworks. The one I’m thinking about right now is it was a firework that went in our backyard, hit a pile of leaves, lit their extension cord that tied their Traeger to the garage outlet. And that’s how the house started on fire.

    Dylan Silver (18:12)
    That’s a good point,

    yeah.

    Brian Biernat (18:13)
    So, you know, there’s things come up, you know, in the springtime, you know, a of years ago, we had a bunch of tornadoes at the area and we were just getting pounded like two or three a day for like two weeks. Like we were turning people away. Right. And so if you’re not so and here’s the other thing, if you’re going to if you’re going to be in this business, then you need to be in the business. You have to get your property set up. You need to have everything. Basically, when people come to our properties.

    Dylan Silver (18:24)
    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (18:39)
    They just bring your clothes, right? We have everything else, washer, dryer, we have cleaning supplies, have plenty of towels, all the cookware, fully equipped kitchens, the houses are clean, they’re safe, you don’t have deferred maintenance. mean, we’re kind of anal about making sure things are fixed. And so if you’re arbitraging, mass release with a landlord, you need to make sure that they understand that we expect things to be fixed.

    Dylan Silver (19:05)
    It’s gotta be, yeah, everything’s gotta be

    there.

    Brian Biernat (19:08)
    But yeah, you earn trust with these people because you move quickly and you help them get into a house ⁓ seamlessly without causing them more pain, right?

    Dylan Silver (19:20)
    Yeah, yeah. And to your point, you know, when folks are in this situation, right, they want something that’s that’s going to, you know, alleviate their concerns rather than, OK, we just found this place and now we’ve got to go, you know, buy towels because it doesn’t have any. Right. How likely are you going to be to recommend that?

    Brian Biernat (19:39)
    Or they get in there and there’s mice, or they have bugs, or things are dirty. Cleanliness is godliness in the furnace round space. If you don’t have a clean house, you’re done. You’re absolutely done.

    Dylan Silver (19:49)
    Amen.

    ⁓ We

    are actually coming up on time here, Brian. Where can folks go to reach out to your team, to learn more about your business? How can our audience get in contact with you?

    Brian Biernat (20:05)
    They can, they can hit, so I’ll, I’ll throw my cell out there. ⁓ My cell is 769-209-7776. I’m on Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn. you know, we have a, Community Corporate Housing is our website. They can hit our website, [email protected] is our email. So feel free to, to reach out, text, come in on LinkedIn, come in on Facebook and we’re pretty responsive. ⁓ But yeah.

    We’re looking to maybe do something this year that would help new operators get into business. So more to come on that, but ⁓ that’s how you can find us.

    Dylan Silver (20:46)
    Brian, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for coming on the show.

    Brian Biernat (20:49)
    Hey, appreciate it, Dylan. Thank you.

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