How Much Does Corporate Housing Cost in Raleigh, Durham & Charlotte? (2026 Real Prices)

Corporate housing is priced per night, but almost nobody stays one night. We specialize in stays of 30 nights or more — relocations, travel contracts, insurance displacements, project work — and stays of that length price with weekly and monthly rates, so run your real dates through the search rather than multiplying in your head. That said, multiplying the from-rates gives you an honest budgeting floor:

Two things make the long-stay math friendlier than the table suggests:

• The cleaning fee amortizes to almost nothing. A one-time cleaning fee is the same whether you stay 3 nights or 90 — on a weekend it can add double digits per night, but spread across a 90-night stay it rounds to pocket change.
• At 90 continuous days, North Carolina stops taxing the stay entirely — roughly a 13–15% swing, covered below.

The most common pricing mistake we see: comparing a corporate housing rate against the base rents on apartment-listing sites. As of mid-2026, market rent trackers put the average one-bedroom around $1,380 a month in Raleigh, $1,460 in Charlotte, and $1,380 in Durham (estimates vary by tracker, roughly $1,150–$1,850) — and downtown and Uptown buildings like the ones we operate in run above those citywide averages.

So yes — a 30-night furnished stay costs a few hundred dollars more than the average citywide unfurnished rent. But the unfurnished number isn't a real alternative for a 1–6 month stay, because it leaves almost everything out:

For stays under about six months, the lease route usually loses once you price furniture, utility setup, and the 12-month commitment you don't need. For the full room-by-room inventory behind the word "included," see what a fully furnished apartment includes. And if your real comparison is an extended-stay hotel rather than a lease, we wrote that one up separately: extended-stay hotel vs furnished apartment.

Our apartments are also listed on Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com — so you can price-check us in two tabs. What you'll find: since late 2025, Airbnb folds its commission (around 15.5% for most hosts) into the host's side rather than showing guests a separate service-fee line. The middleman's cut didn't disappear — it's baked into the nightly price you see.

Booking direct removes the middleman from the transaction entirely. Same apartment, and you're dealing with the owner-operator: flexible dates if your project moves, answers in writing, instant confirmation, and a real person on the phone if your plans change. For companies, direct booking also means proper invoices and W-9-friendly paperwork — the thing OTA checkout flows are worst at.

Here's the rule most relocation budgets miss: North Carolina taxes short-term lodging — state and local sales tax plus a county occupancy tax — but an accommodation rented to the same person for 90 or more continuous days is exempt from both. Better still, per the NC Department of Revenue, tax collected during the first 90 days is refunded once your stay crosses the 90-day line. On a three-month-plus assignment, that's a four- or five-figure bill shrinking by double-digit percent:

*Mecklenburg County's sales-tax rate rises by 1% on July 1, 2026, nudging Charlotte's combined under-90-day load to 16.25%.

The fine print matters — what counts as "continuous," how the refund works, and how it applies when an employer books on an employee's behalf — so we wrote a full plain-English guide: the NC 90-day occupancy tax rule. This page is general information, not tax or legal advice — confirm your situation with a tax professional.

Five inputs decide where your price lands relative to the from-rates:

1. Unit size. The smallest units anchor the from-rates; Durham's two-bedroom lofts that sleep six cost more per night and far less per person than two hotel rooms.
2. Dates. Our decade of booking data shows there's no dead season here — but May (campus-visit peak) and October (wedding peak) run hotter than January. Flexible dates are worth real money.
3. Number of guests. Pricing is per guest count, which is why our search asks before it quotes — two people and five people in the same loft are different totals.
4. Stay length. Weekly and monthly rates kick in as stays lengthen; the cleaning fee amortizes; at 90 continuous days the taxes come off.
5. Building. Within a city, a high-rise with a rooftop pool prices differently from a loft — the search shows per-building rates side by side.

If you'd rather start from a place than a price, these are the pages our corporate and relocation guests use most: