Eric Broughton kept hearing rumblings at events and conferences for multifamily building owners about one topic: The sharing economy.
It was clearly profitable for homeowners and renters who could spare an extra bedroom or rent out their property for a night, but multifamily property owners and management companies weren't as sure how it fit into their busy day-to-day managing multiple rentals and properties.
Broughton, along with Kevin Koperski and Andrew Hamilton, who previously founded apartment hunting site RentSocial (acquired by RealPage), decided to dig into the problem and spent four months talking to previous clients and industry experts about pain points of multifamily apartment buildings and the sharing economy.
The result? The launch of their latest startup, ApartmentJet.
ApartmentJet, which just officially launched in May, is a management platform that allows multifamily apartment owners and management companies to list their vacant units on homesharing sites such as Airbnb. Owners manage all aspects of the listing, including bookings, communications and reviews, all within the platform. They also include a built-in security feature, where any prospective guest goes through background screening, to ensure safety of permanent residents in the building.
The founders see this as a one-stop-shop marketing management tool where owners can see all the details of short-term rentals in one place, which is key given the complexity of many of multifamily building owners' operations.
"We understand a lot of the complexities these large management companies face trying to manage these things," said Koperski over email. "We also understand that every organization may divvy up the work among their various departments in different ways. We think we’ve built a solution that will work for any management company, regardless of how they choose to divvy up that work."
The property managers decide the nightly price, and ApartmentJet takes a percentage of this charge (after the service fees taken out by homesharing platforms). In an early pilot project, two properties listed a single guest suite and within six weeks they had booked 49 nights with a total booked revenue of $4,200. They're also set to go live with a pilot property for a top 10 multifamily property owner, and signed up multiple owner operators in regions nationwide, Koperski added.
Currently they only have the service available to connect with Airbnb, but they have plans to integrate with HomeAway. The founders also hope to eventually offer property managers advanced analytics and marketing suggestions.
We think we’ve built a solution that will work for any management company
All this said, some multifamily apartment building owners and residents have pushed back against using units for short-term rentals, citing concerns with safety and the hassle of a revolving door of guests. Koperski believes ApartmentJet can help alleviate these worries.
"ApartmentJet’s purpose is to give the owners [and] operators control over this unsupervised flow of guests, helping to turn it into a safe, secure, profitable revenue generator, while at the same time earning the confidence of residents who want to be certain management has effective oversight over all short and long-term residents at the community," Koperski added. "Everyone can win."
