Affordable Rentals: Multimillion-Dollar Homes Discounted by Home Staging Company

Most of us can envision what a couple of grand will rent in big cities -- a bedroom or two, with a halfway-renovated bathroom and a small balcony. But your fate could be different -- say a $7 million, 9,500-square-foot Bel Air villa, or a $1.5 million desert palace north of Scottsdale, Ariz. -- if you decided to manage a multimillion-dollar mansion that is up for sale.

With a glut of higher-end real estate on the market and a shortage of buyers, Showhomes, a national home staging company, is leasing pricey estates (that have not sold) at prices mirroring typical rents in major metropolitan cities. In some locales, rental prices start as low as $1,500 to $2,000.

Though the company has been in business since the '80s, the housing straits of late and the influx of inventory have allowed the growing company to make once-untouchable estates a lot more accessible.