How We Make Renting Out a Home Easy

Our unique origin story gives us a unique approach. We outline the three ways that we’re different, and how we offer the best owner experience in renting out a home.

Like so many businesses, ours started with a problem that needed to be solved. It was 2015 and Joe, who would go on to be our co-founder and CTO, wanted to rent out his condo in San Francisco. The process was complicated, stressful, and time consuming—so time consuming, in fact, that Joe had to take time off to sort everything out. Kulveer (future co-founder and CEO) noticed, and realized that renting out a home wasn’t as easy as it could be. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could hire a property manager in San Francisco with a few minutes spent online? Why not solve their own problem and build a business that would make it easy for owners to rent out their home?

Two months later, we’d signed our first home and a year later we’d be managing 100 homes. We knew that we could make it easier for owners to rent out a home. Using data and tech, we could improve the process, and be even better than any property manager in San Francisco could be. Since that first home, we’ve grown to a portfolio of over 2,400 homes that we manage directly, over 4,000 partner homes, and 500 owners.

We understand the needs of homeowners with one rental property, many investment homes, or a resident duplex looking for full-service property management. Our origin story is unique, and it’s led us to our business model we have today, which still has those unique characteristics we started with. Namely, that we’re focused on our owners. We make it easy for owners to rent out their home, but even more so, we partner with them so that our interests are aligned.

Here’s how we set ourselves apart.

We operate as your partner

We sign on as a master tenant for your home, not as a property manager. This means that you get paid something, no matter if we have a tenant in the home or not. You stand to earn the most money, though, when your home is occupied. On our side, we’re incentivized to get great tenants in your home because we only earn money when we have a tenant—in fact, we’ll lose money when we don’t. So we’re driven to keep our occupancy rates high (they’re currently at 87%). Everyone’s profits are maximized when a home is occupied, and so our fortunes are tied up together in this way.

Because of this, we focus on finding the right balance between supply and demand. We want to charge the best rate, with the highest occupancy. Since we don’t make any money if your home sits vacant while we wait for someone to pay a high rate, we keep our prices in line with market demand at any given moment. Our machine-learning pricing algorithm allows us to get this balance just right. This stands in contrast to a property management company, who typically wants to get the absolute highest rate they can for your home—even if that means it sits vacant for months while they’re waiting to fill it.

We have an incentive to maintain your home

Our residents aren’t typical long-term tenants who sign a year-long lease, and they’re also not hotel guests staying for a few nights at a time. Our average resident stays for 3 months, and a large portion of them are traveling for work. This makes their needs unique. Since they’re staying for at least a month and have invested thousands of dollars in their stay, they have high standards for the home.

This isn’t a resident who will put up with something subpar since they’re only staying for a few nights—they’re living in the home for multiple months. What you’ll put up with for one weekend versus what you’ll put up with for a few months is very different. Which means that we have a vested interest in keeping each home well maintained and clean, addressing any issues that come up quickly. A slow draining bathroom sink, for example, is something you can handle for a weekend—it’s not something you’ll put up with for a month or more.

When a typical property manager has someone signed on for a year lease, a minor maintenance issue isn’t an urgent priority—they already have that person locked in for a year. Not so for us. If a home has a maintenance issue, it needs to be resolved not only to satisfy the high standards of the current resident, but to ensure the home is ready for the next resident. With a stay of 1-3 months, we need to solve any maintenance issue before the next resident arrives. For us, the quality and cleanliness are absolutely essential to our resident’s experience.

It’s truly hands-off for you

We handle it all: designing and furnishing your home, marketing, finding and screening tenants, handling check-in, addressing any issues that come up during a stay, and maintaining and cleaning the home. All residents complete criminal background checks and credit checks, and if there are any non-payment or late payment issues, we handle it all.

What is often most worrisome for owners is dealing with any tenant issues that come up during a stay (something traditional property managers are notoriously bad at). We have a full customer experience team, with highly trained agents on call 24/7 to handle any issues that might come up. As an owner with Zeus, you’ll never have to worry about handling tenant issues. And if you ever need anything as an owner, our owners team is standing by to help.

From our founding 5 years ago to our work today, we’re still dedicated to that same idea of making it easy for owners to rent out their homes. We weren’t experts when we started, but with over 1 million nights booked on our platform, and the most data in the industry, we’re now industry-leading experts. And we’re still learning every day: growing and improving to deliver better experiences to our owners and residents.

If you’re ready to get a customized quote on your home, take the next step.

Have a friend who wants to rent out their home? Send them our way. For every homeowner you refer, you’ll earn $500 (they’ll get a gift too). Learn more here.