Most comparisons of short-term and mid-term rentals stop at the nightly rate, which is the one number that makes short-term look unbeatable. A unit at $180 a night sounds like $5,400 a month. A mid-term placement at $3,200 sounds like a step down.

That comparison is wrong, and it is wrong in a specific way: it prices the nights you fill and ignores everything else the calendar does to you.

Here is the arithmetic that actually decides it.

Start with occupancy, not rate

Nobody rents 30 nights out of 30. Tampa's tracked short-term occupancy depends on who is measuring: AirDNA puts the average at 56% on a $188 average daily rate; Airbtics reports a 65% median; AirROI says 43.7%. The honest range is "mid-40s to mid-60s, depending on the season and the source."

So let's be generous to short-term and use the top of that range. $188 a night at 65% occupancy is about $3,666 in a 30-day month. At AirDNA's 56%, it is $3,158. Mid-term at $3,200 is $3,200 — for a month with no gaps in it, because the resident is still there on the 14th and the 22nd and every other day you would otherwise be hoping for a booking.

Priced at real occupancy, the two are already within a few hundred dollars of each other — before we subtract anything.

Then subtract what turnover costs

This is the line people leave out, because it does not appear on a booking statement.

Every turnover costs you a clean, a linen change, consumables, and — the expensive part — the hours somebody spends coordinating it. The Florida market average for a turnover clean runs $165–$178, with Orlando quotes spanning $120 for a one-bedroom to $205 for a three-bedroom, plus laundry at $8–$20 and consumable restocking at $10–$25 per stay.

Call it $165 all-in, conservatively. Six turnovers in a month: $990. Against one turnover in four months on a mid-term placement — $165 spread across the whole stay, or about $41 a month.

The generous-case advantage of ~$470 just became a deficit of roughly $480.

Then subtract your time

If you manage the property yourself, your hours are the cost nobody invoices you for — and nobody can cite a study for what your hour is worth, so we won't pretend to. Fill in two numbers of your own: minutes per booking on messaging, check-in instructions, the lockbox that jammed, the review, the cancellation; and what you'd pay someone else to do it. Ninety minutes per booking across six bookings is nine hours a month. At $50 an hour, short-term just spent $450 of your time; at your numbers, it spent yours.

Then subtract the parts that are hard to price

  • Wear. Six sets of people through a unit does more damage than one family for four months. Not dramatically more per stay — but it compounds.
  • Vacancy risk in the shoulder season. Gulf Coast short-term demand is seasonal. A four-month placement running from September through December does not care what the tourism calendar is doing.
  • Regulatory exposure. Florida preempts municipalities from banning vacation rentals outright (ordinances predating June 1, 2011 are grandfathered), but cities and counties still run registration, inspection, occupancy, parking and safety regimes, and the 2024 attempt to centralise it all at the state level (SB 280) was vetoed — so the local patchwork is what you operate in. A 90-day furnished lease sits outside most of that machinery entirely.

Where short-term genuinely wins

It would be dishonest to run this only one direction.

Short-term wins when your unit is in a high-demand tourist location during peak season, when you have the systems and staff to absorb turnover cheaply, and when you want the flexibility to block dates for your own use. If you own a beachfront condo and February is booked at $400 a night, mid-term is not your best month.

The honest framing is not mid-term beats short-term. It is that short-term wins on peak-season rate, and mid-term wins on everything that happens between peaks — which, across a full year on the Gulf Coast, is most of the calendar.

Run it on your own unit

The model is four lines. Take one property and fill them in:

  1. Realistic monthly revenue at your actual occupancy — not your rate card
  2. Minus turnover costs × turnovers per month
  3. Minus your hours × what your time is worth
  4. Minus a vacancy allowance for the months you know are slow

Then compare that number to one monthly rate with no gaps in it.

Most managers who do this exercise find the two are closer than they assumed, and that the mid-term number carries far less variance. Less upside in February. Considerably less downside in September.

Why insurance placements specifically

Mid-term demand comes from several places — travelling nurses, corporate relocations, people between homes. Insurance displacement is the one where the person on the other side does this professionally: an adjuster who places families every week, works to defined timelines, and handles the paperwork as part of their job.

That is the subject of the next guide: what insurance-displacement housing actually pays, including who pays, when, and what varies.