SAN FRANCISCO — Zumper, a privately owned rental marketplace, is launching short-term rental listings. The company has also raised a $30 million Series D funding extension with a total of $178 million raised to date.
Work from anywhere has prompted a cultural shift in day-to-day life and is just one example of how the pandemic accelerated macro trends in alternative accommodation. Zumper found that ⅓ of users were interested in flexible rentals and data from Zumper’s 2021 survey of short-term rental users dictates that beyond the trendy use cases for short-term rentals, whether digital nomads or consumers with the unfettered means to travel and live a flexible lifestyle, short-term rentals are a means for a myriad of situational stays, such as a gap in housing, migratory work and even a stepping stone to building rental history, credit and more. The survey also revealed that 74 percent of users are booking 1-2 monthly rentals annually and 49 percent remain in one unit between two and six months. Short-term rentals are therefore not just an option for how people vacation, but how they live.
“Our brand is aspirational yet grounded,” said Shalin Amin, Chief Experience Officer of Zumper. “We’re not just for trendsetters and digital nomads but for those in-between leases or those trying to build a rental history. We’re a solution for many people looking for temporary housing in a growing workforce of migratory workers, like traveling nurses, construction crews, and disaster response teams. Our users play a critical role in making the communities and cities they relocate to thrive.”
In Zumper’s 2022 survey of monthly renters, 12.3 percent of respondents said they use short-term rentals for nomad life, while 35.2 percent said they use them to accommodate a temporary gap in housing, by far the most common use. Monthly renters also use them for work travel, as 21.3 percent said that was why they used short-term rentals. Think of a traveling nurse or someone whose job is location-specific but at multiple locations. Rounding out the use cases were people scouting locations before a move (19.4 percent) and students who didn’t want to commit for an entire year (8.1 percent).In Zumper’s 2021 survey*, almost 50 percent said they’re not sure where to even find monthly rentals, suggesting that there’s a need for a go-to platform that caters to these renters.
By expanding inventory to now offer short-term options, Zumper directly addresses renter pain points by giving consumers the flexibility to find their forever or for now residence. Zumper’s short-term listings can be booked at no additional fee to the guest, which is traditionally upwards of 15% or more on other short-term rental sites such as Airbnb. Conversely landlords can now opt to list their properties short-term to meet demand with the ability to advertise their short-term and monthly rentals in front of Zumper’s over 178M annual visits.
“With the traditional short-term rental industry, fees are too high and consumers need to look at a multitude of different websites to find the right listing,” said Zumper co-founder and CEO Anthemos Georgiades. “We want to build the most comprehensive rental platform that enables our renters to easily find the best short-term, monthly or long-term rentals with a product designed for today’s far more flexible world.”
