Living in a hotel or apartment where all of your homeowner worries are someone else's problem is a fun daydream, especially when the air conditioner starts putting out hot air in August or the sidewalk needs shoveling in February. When fire destroys a home, however, or a hurricane tears off a roof, the daydream can become a nightmare.

In the midst of such emotional and physical turmoil, the newly homeless turn to their insurance agents. Standard homeowner policies provide for temporary housing of displaced families, usually for benefit periods of up to one year. Yet, the prospect of finding temporary homes, furnishing them, and negotiating rental fees, deposits, and utilities only adds to policyholders' nightmares.

Enter a relatively new service: temporary housing for the insurance industry. As with most emerging industries, the profit-making model tends to vary slightly from company to company. “We get volume discounts on furnishings and housewares, and make our money on that [through mark-ups],” said Travis Sumners, CEO of Relocation Housing Specialists in Sacramento, Calif. “We also negotiate attractive rents on home and apartment rentals, but we do not mark up the rent itself, only the furnishings and housewares. There are times when a policyholder does not need a complete furnished package; they can use their own items in a temporary house. In those instances, we give the insurance company the option of handling the relocation themselves or letting us do it for a $200 flat fee.”