With many millennials choosing to lease apartments on a short-term basis, some property startups are looking to fill a growing demand for furnished housing.
One is Landing, which leases furnished apartments throughout the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company originally planned to operate in about 30 cities last year, but instead grew to 75 thanks to the pandemic, according to Landing CEO Bill Smith.
With Landing, renters buy an annual membership that gives them the ability to rent furnished apartments in any of its cities. Smith said he is seeing an increasing number of customers leave cities like New York for places such as Denver and St. Petersburg.
The company recently secured $45 million in funding from a group of investors led by Foundry Group and included Greycroft and Maveron. It also scored $55 million in debt.
San Francisco-based Sonder https://therealdeal.com/tag/sonder/, which rents out furnished apartments, has seen an uptick of extended stays, according to its CEO Francis Davidson. Stays of longer than 14 days make up about 60 percent of its business, an increase from less than 25 percent pre-pandemic.
Meanwhile, Zeus Living — a provider of corporate housing — said it pivoted to renting apartments to individuals after seeing a drop in company travel. Remote workers now make up about 25 percent of the company’s business, according to its CEO, Kulveer Taggar.
[WSJ] — Keith Larsen