Furnished or Unfurnished

No additional rent to being furnished unless in a prime location in midtown or Wall Street. If upper west side, upper east side, primarily residential areas, etc. there is no benefit.

I did notice that people charge about $300 more for a studio if furnished. This is in FiDi BTW. If you want, you can advertise both options.

if you have furnished rental, that means it mostly will attract short-term renters, which means you may have to prepare for renting short term (if your building allows it), then there is a risk in a long run you will lose many days (terms that is vacant) in between those renters, and spending your time&money for each time advertising. Also your furniture may be damaged, and every time you have to replace/dryclean/repair that would be hassle. Personally I don't like most of the furnished rental because they furnish with NO TASTE at all.

You need to first think about the type of person you're trying to rent to. Different people will have different expectations. When I was a London expat about 75% of the flats I saw were furnished, and furnished poorly. Ikea furniture, fake wood linoleum flooring and cheap fixtures. And I was in the $15,000 - 20,000/month range (work was paying!). It turned me off despite what were otherwise nice flats, I couldn't see living with that crap especially at those prices. I ended up renting a rare unfurnished flat and buying decent furniture. In my view the owners of the furnished flats had identified their target expat renter, but were too cheap to spend the cash for furniture consistent with the price of the rental.

In New York you might want to target expats or others who need furnished housing, but it's probably not the majority of potential renters. What you could do is offer flexibility, if you find a renter that wants a furnished flat, agree to work with them to purchase furniture to their liking in exchange for a higher rent, essentially helping to finance the purchase of their furniture. If someone would have offered me that type of option, I would have jumped on it, even if the flat wasn't perfect.

But my best advice is do not furnish a flat with items that are not consistent in quality with the rent you are trying to charge. It's a huge turnoff.

thanks goldie