Move over, Airbnb! Mid-term rentals are the new game in Twin Cities and beyond.

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.

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, Ore., 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.”

Tim and Alyssa Wegleitner are also MTR converts. They focused on yearlong leases when they began investing in real estate in 2020 but fell into MTRs when demand for furnished rentals increased during the pandemic. They now operate eight mid-term rentals, one long-term rental and one short-term rental in the Twin Cities.

They said mid-term rentals aren’t as time-consuming and hands-on as short-term ones. On average, guests stay 60 to 120 days, so they only have to clean, restock and turn over the property three to five times a year instead of every few days.

An MTR easily makes 1½ to two times the rental rate of a traditional long-term tenant, they said.

The couple added that about half of their guests work in health care, but they’re also seeing seasonal demand from snowbirds and grandparents who want to come visit their kids and family for longer stretches during the summer.

“We love being able to provide spaces for our guests where they can arrive and have everything they would need as if they were in their own home,” Tim Wegleitner said.

Until Wolf launched MiniStays, the go-to national site for mid-term hosts was Furnished Finder. That catered primarily to traveling nurses like Ashley Zezulka, who recently spent three months at one of Wolf’s Twin Cities rentals.

She moves frequently, she said, adding MiniStays is “more user-friendly and stylish” compared with other options.

Travelers have always had the ability to book longer stays on many vacation rental sites, but that meant perusing availability calendars to find properties available for months at a time. Many rental owners also operate their own local sites, like Christy Living, which has nearly two dozen furnished and unfurnished rentals in the Twin Cities metro.

Wolf said platforms for short-term renters can sometimes be more expensive for longer stays since it will just multiply the nightly rate instead of offering a monthly charge. Fees can be higher as well, he said, adding MiniStays doesn’t charge hosts to list their property, just a 2% charge if booked. MiniStays also includes a lease tailored to monthly stays.

Furnished Finder, which launched in 2014, charges hosts an annual subscription fee to post their listings, but it leaves payment to the host and guest arranging a Venmo or Zelle digital payment directly.

Wolf likened Furnished Finder to a paid version of Craigslist and said he wanted to create a more comprehensive, streamlined experience. So MiniStays includes a reservation-management system and a more integrated payment system for better protection for hosts and guests.

“We found a happy medium,” he said. “The goal is to combine all the best features of Furnished Finder and Airbnb.”

Wolf — who played football at Minnesota State University Mankato with former Vikings receiver Adam Thielen — had been working in real estate for about a decade before he launched the site. He created it after networking with other MTR hosts who longed for a better platform.

“It seemed like everybody was waiting for something better to come along,” he said.

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, N.C., 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.”