[ad_1]
One consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic is that many people have the flexibility to work remotely, which means they have more flexibility to live wherever they want.
As a result, many people choose to move – temporarily or permanently – to other cities.
Marketplace for online rentals ZumperThis means changing user needs. While the San Francisco company historically matches tenants with landlords for long-term leases, short-term rentals are only a very small part of its business.
But in the year In 2021, as more people start exploring other locations, Zumper sees a “significant subset” of renters looking for more flexible options, such as month-to-month or hybrid leases.
For those who don’t know, a lease is one to six months long with no fixed term. It can also be described as a “rolling lease” because tenants have a short notice to vacate.
CEO and co-founder said, “We saw that our users want more flexibility in their lives.” Antimos “Anth” Georgiades. “Some want to be nomads and some want to try different environments before committing to a long term commitment.
Last year, Zumper had about 1 million listings and over 70 million users. Of the 70 million, one-third wanted short-term rentals of apartments, hotels or condominiums. Georgiades. To better cater to that set of users, here’s what Zumper is announcing today. Founder He describes it as “being born again.”
To that end, the company has raised $30 million in Series D1 funding led by Kleiner Perkins to help people looking for short-term rental options in an effort to improve its product.
The funding closed earlier this year, but it was announced today. Goodwater, Greycroft and other unnamed investors also participated in the financing, bringing the company’s total revenue to nearly $180 million.
Zumper had raised it. $60 million has been received. Series D round In March 2020, although the latest increase was an extension of that round, Georgiades told TechCrunch that the company saw “huge upside” in the valuation. (Usually reviews are flat when extension rounds are up).
The executive declined to divulge a figure for where Zumper is currently worth, but sources familiar with the company’s inner workings told TechCrunch that it is now “over $500 million.”
He said the money was mostly gone. Funding product development for all of the above trends. First, Zumper has added more than half a million short-term listings to meet customer demand.
By pushing into short-term rental offerings, is Zumper encroaching on Airbnb’s territory? In particular, Airbnb changed course during the pandemic by offering more long-term stays on its platform.
Admitting that there is “some overlap”. Georgiades Zumper said “It’s focused on helping people find a place to live, unlike Airbnb, which focuses on helping people find a place to stay, often while traveling or on vacation.”
“Airbnb has done a great job during the pandemic of hosting dynamic rentals,” he told TechCrunch. “We’ll see A slightly different approach with variable rents is very low fees for tenants and most of our users stay between one and six months. I’m not saying we’re going to Airbnb, or we’re not trying to get into the vacation rental space on them, but we see it as a real rental platform opportunity to deliver in a slightly different way in this dynamic world. He said.
Ilya Fushman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, announced that the venture firm has invested in each of Zumper’s funding rounds since its founding in 2012. After two weeks Launching into the public beta of SF Riot. Other backers in that early financing included Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), NEA and Greylock.
“Home is a basic need and must be enhanced by the way people live and work today,” Fushman wrote. “Zumper has built a modern, highly flexible, cost-effective and high-quality inventory experience that empowers people to find the best place to live.”
He went on to describe Zumper as “the first real estate marketplace to offer the annual, monthly and nightly rental options people want.”
“Today’s renters are focused on portability, flexibility and a high-quality software experience, and Zumper delivers on all of that,” Fushman added.
In 2021, investors were drawn to what Georgiadis described as a post-vaccine “explosion” of demand from tenants.
That caused an explosion Double-digit revenue growth year over year;
Self-proclaimed mission of making rentals “easy to book.” Zumper competes with the likes of publicly traded Zillow, Apartments.com and CoStar.
The company makes money by charging multifamily and single-family owners a subscription to the platform to get their inventory in front of Zumper users. For example, it works with companies like BlueGround to get fully furnished apartments in front of more potential tenants. While it may seem like a SaaS offering in landlords, they typically pay for Zumper with annual contracts. Georgiades described his long-term offering as “a typical advertising business.” In a short-term space, it’s a bit more transactional, with the company paying an average of 10% of the booking value at the time the rental is booked.
But Zumper didn’t put all its eggs in one basket to make the same mistake as other companies that have seen pandemic-related bumps in their business.
“Long-term rentals remain our core offering,” Georgiades said. “At the same time we They absolutely believe that flex is here to stay. I don’t think the demand will go back up from last year, but it’s still a large segment that hasn’t built a big market and we think that’s a big opportunity.
The rental market is very hot right now. Last week, private equity firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote the largest individual check for $350 million to Flow, Adam Neumann’s new residential real estate company focused on rentals. That company aims to be a different asset management company than Zumper.
[ad_2]
Source link