Furnishing for a weekend guest and furnishing for someone living in the unit for three months are different jobs. Most owners furnish for the photographs, which is understandable and slightly wrong.
The test
Could somebody unpack a suitcase, work a full day, cook a real meal and do laundry, without improvising? That is the whole standard. A weekend guest forgives a missing chopping board. A guest in week seven does not, and they say so in the review.
What actually matters
- Storage. The most under-provided thing in furnished condominiums. Empty drawers, hanging space, and somewhere to put an open suitcase
- A workable desk. A real chair at a real surface near a socket. A lot of mid-term guests are here for work and a laptop on a coffee table does not survive a month
- A kitchen somebody can cook in. Sharp knives, a decent pan, an oven tray, a colander. Eating out for three months is not a plan
- Laundry. In-unit if the building allows it. It changes what the unit is worth to a long-stay guest more than almost anything else on this list
- Enough light. Two lamps beyond the ceiling fitting. Toronto is dark by five for months at a time and a single overhead light makes a good apartment feel grim
Three things not to spend on
- An expensive sofa. It is the item most likely to be marked, and the difference between mid-range and expensive is invisible in photographs
- Decorative objects. They read as clutter, they need dusting between every stay, and they go missing
- A second television. Nobody has ever booked a unit for the bedroom television
Spend the difference on the bed
If there is one place to put money, it is the mattress and the linen. It is the thing every guest uses for eight hours a night for the length of their stay, it is the single most common subject of a bad review, and it lasts several years.
Partially furnished is a perfectly normal starting point. It is worth having somebody walk the unit and tell you what is missing before you buy anything, because the list is usually shorter and cheaper than owners expect.