Furnishing is the cost that catches people out, because it is the one that does not come out of the mortgage. The lender pays for the house. You pay for the bed.
Why nobody can give you an average
Search for a figure and you will find ranges from a few thousand to six figures, mostly from companies that sell furniture or run listings. No agency or platform publishes a survey of what hosts actually spend, and anyone who quotes one number for a studio in Tulsa and a four-bedroom on a lake is guessing.
The range is wide for reasons you can list. Bedroom count drives it hardest, because every bedroom is a bed, a mattress, a frame, side tables, lamps and two sets of linens before anything decorative. After that it is whether you buy new or furnish from marketplace listings, whether the house has outdoor space worth using, and whether you are competing against four similar listings or forty.
What you can do is price your own list. The one piece of official data that helps is the direction of prices: BLS put household furnishings and supplies up 0.6% in the 12 months to August 2026, so a budget you built from quotes last year is close to what the same list costs now.
What the money is actually for
Here is how the example below splits a $25,000 budget. The split is the example’s own, not a price list, and the point of showing it is that the total is made of about forty decisions rather than one.
| Budget | |
|---|---|
| Beds, mattresses and bedroom furniture | $7,500 |
| Living room and seating | $4,000 |
| Kitchen, dining table and chairs | $4,500 |
| Towels, sheets and bathroom fittings | $2,500 |
| Patio, grill and outdoor seating | $2,000 |
| Televisions, wifi and locks | $1,500 |
| Rugs, lamps, art and window coverings | $2,000 |
| Dishes, tools, and the first load of supplies | $1,000 |
| Furnishing total | $25,000 |
These are example figures, not a quote. Price the list for your own house and your own bedroom count before you trust any total, including this one.
Two lines are worth arguing about. Mattresses and seating are what guests complain about in reviews, and they are also where the cheap option fails first. Outdoor space is the line people cut, and in a market where guests come for the lake or the mountains it is part of what they booked.
What furnishing does to the deal
The example is the one the short-term rental calculator opens with: a $350,000 house, 20% down on a 30-year loan at 7%, averaging $375 a night and booked 65% of the year, which is about 237 nights. The loan covers 80% of the price and nothing else, so closing costs and every stick of furniture come out of your pocket.
| Cash in | |
|---|---|
| Down payment (20%) | $70,000 |
| Closing costs (3%) | $10,500 |
| Furnishing | $25,000 |
| Cash before the first booking | $105,500 |
Furnishing is 24% of that. It is the third-largest line in the deal and the only one with no loan behind it, which is why running out of money at the furnishing stage is how a short-term rental ends up listed half-finished.
Does the furniture change your monthly cash flow?
No, and that is the part worth understanding. Bookings bring in $7,414 a month in this example. Running costs take $4,723, including Airbnb’s fee, which its help center says is 15.5% for most hosts on the single fee, taken from the nightly price and any fees you charge. The mortgage takes $1,863. That leaves $828 a month, and it leaves $828 whether you furnished the place for $15,000 or $40,000.
What the budget changes is how much cash you had to put down to earn that $828.
| Furnishing | Cash in | Cash flow / mo | Cash-on-cash return | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $15,000 | $95,500 | +$828 | 10.4% | |
| $25,000 | $105,500 | +$828 | 9.4% | |
| $40,000 | $120,500 | +$828 | 8.2% |
Cash-on-cash return is the year’s cash flow divided by the cash you put in. Every extra $10,000 of furniture takes about a point off it here. That is the real trade: spending more does not cost you anything monthly, it costs you return, and it only pays for itself if the better furniture fills more nights or lifts the nightly price. Working out the booking rate a house needs is how you test whether it did.
What the furnishing budget does not cover
The budget above buys the house once. Keeping it stocked is a separate line that runs every month for as long as you host.
This example pays $300 a month for cleaning and $150 a month for supplies, the coffee, paper, soap and detergent that leave with the guests. Both are in the $4,723 of running costs above, not in the $25,000. Guests also break things and wear them out faster than a tenant would, which is what the repair and reserve lines are for.
One more thing the $25,000 does not buy is time. Furnishing a three-bedroom house is weeks of deliveries, returns and assembly, and the listing earns nothing until it is done. If you are buying with a loan, the mortgage payment starts whether or not the beds have arrived.
How the tax rules treat the furniture
You generally do not deduct $25,000 of furniture in the year you buy it. IRS Publication 527 puts appliances, carpets and furniture used in rental property in the 5-year property class, depreciated under the general system with the 200% declining balance method and a half-year convention.
There are provisions that change that timing, and which of them apply depends on facts this post cannot see. Ask a tax professional before you plan around a deduction.
Price the list before you make the offer
Build the room-by-room list for the actual house, get real prices into it, and add it to your cash needed alongside the down payment and closing costs. A deal that works on paper and leaves you $8,000 short of a furnished house is not a deal that works.
Then check what the house earns before you decide how much of it to spend on sofas. How to analyze a short-term rental runs the income and costs end to end, and what Airbnb charges hosts covers the fee that comes off the top of every booking.