Flexible Rental Living Drawing Interest, Investment

Investor and consumer interest in short-term rentals and so-called “flexible living” have been growing in the third quarter with several players announcing rounds of Series funding to build out their brands.

Zumper on Thursday topped its series D funding, closing with an additional $30M led by Kleiner Perkins, to relaunch with a short-term rental extension of its core long-term rental business.

Placemakr, formerly WhyHotel, is seeing strong revenue in its Hospitality Living properties.

Bao Vuong, President, Co-Founder at Placemakr, tells GlobeSt.com that its grown 3X in cash flow lately at its Nashville location, and in New York City, it’s outperforming competitor RevPAR by 60%, and is ranked number one against the comp set in RPI.

“Flexible use properties that commingle home and hospitality create substantial added value for owners and investors,” Vuong said. “Our flexible use, tech-enabled model blends a property’s use between residential and hotel. Through this approach, we can increase operating income through higher hospitality revenue and low-cost tech-enabled operations while maintaining the downside protection of multifamily. It’s this mix that creates outsized returns on assets for our real estate partners.”

Landing Closes on Series C

Landing, a national, membership-based flexible apartment living provider, on Thursday announced the closing of a $125M Series C through a combination of new equity and debt financings.

The round was led by Delta-v Capital with participation from new and existing investors, including Greycroft and Foundry.

Landing has seen a 380% membership increase in the past year. The company said the funding will be used to “continue expanding its network of apartments to meet the growing demand for this emerging lifestyle.”

Landing offers move-in-ready apartments with monthly leases and members can move freely throughout its nationwide network with a two-week notice.

‘Massive’ NOI Opportunities Owners Demand

Todd Butler, Senior Vice President, Flexible Living, RealPage, tells GlobeSt.com that even if Adam Neumann is “scoffed at for his WeWork IPO debacle, the fact that even he is now leaning into this space should be a canary in the coal mine. Regardless of whether he can execute and follow through on this new endeavor, his intuition and pulse on trends should not be downplayed. The fact that he is laser-focused on flexible living validates what we’ve been saying for the last few years, and it’s picking up steam.”

Butler manages RealPage’s short-term rental platform Migo, and said that recent industry headlines surrounding the proliferation of flexible living PMCs should serve as “an industry wake-up call to take stock of the zeitgeist and where things are heading for apartment living; the game is changing; the future is flexible.”

Partnered with Airbnb, Migo provides essential technology and services as an amenity to manage, monitor, and monetize home sharing on Airbnb so that all parties can share in the upside while minimizing risk.

Residents can experience more flexibility and offset their rent by upwards of 20%, operators can see higher rents and higher occupancies, and owners can differentiate their assets from their comp set and see substantial increases in NOI.

Butler says, “a reluctance [or inability] of many traditional fee managers to pivot to the shifting desires of their clients and residents for more flexible living solutions has resulted in the products themselves essentially becoming self-aware and gobbling up [or becoming] third-party fee managers themselves to seize the opportunity.”

He points to “massive” NOI opportunities that owners demand – mixed with the residents’ need for flexibility to live/work/travel post-Covid – are now mutually at odds with “the way it’s always been done.”