The New American Dream and Evolution to FlexLiving

The new American dream? It’s more flexible, mobile, and all about experiences. At Zeus Living, we’re here to help make it happen.

For decades, home ownership served as a proxy for the American dream, but this dream has shifted—the status of owning a home is no longer the primary goal. What matters most to people is chasing new experiences and having flexibility and mobility in how they live. For some, this means renting long-term. For others, this still means buying a home, but not living in it for 30 years. 

At Zeus Living, we connect the renter and the single-family home owner with a new way of living—making owning and renting easy, flexible, and hassle-free. As Garry Tan (founder and managing partner of Initialized Capital) notes, “The pandemic has ushered in a new era in the rental market, where remote work has given people more flexibility on where they live, and technology has opened the door for homeowners to easily rent out their properties. Kulveer [Taggar, CEO] and the Zeus team are uniquely positioned to give today’s renters what they truly want: ease and flexibility, fair prices, and beautiful design.” To that end, we’re thrilled to announce our Series C—a $55M round led by SIG with participation from InitializedCEASTI PlatformNFX, Opendoor’s Eric Wu and Miras—setting us up to lead FlexLiving, a new category of housing that prizes ease and flexibility. 

“From our early days, we’ve provided ‘home’ to people traveling for work, but also for grandparents spending extended time with newborn grandbabies, people seeking healthcare, and families renovating their homes,” Kulveer recounts. “Over the past 18 months we’ve superseded corporate housing and are challenging the old, rigid rental market by offering beautifully designed homes outfitted at fair prices and flexible terms in places residents want to live.”

We’re excited to share our outlook and what’s next for us. 

The Opportunity – Renters

The rental market continues to grow—nearly 1 in 5 Millennials expect to rent forever—but the business of renting hasn’t changed in decades. Millennials and Gen Xers are swimming in debt, putting off partnerships, postponing families, and prioritizing experience over things. They move more often and live in their homes for shorter periods than previous generations. 

2019 trends have accelerated through the pandemic, permanently changing the way we live. Before the pandemic, only about 7% of U.S. workers worked full-time at home. Now, the number is close to 50% of all workers. At Zeus Living, 95% of our team want flexibility to work remotely, which is what we see nationally. Where living close to an office or urban center used to be a given, more people have the flexibility to live where they choose, and not in a fixed location. The remote work trend is here to stay, and this means a long-term need for flexible housing. 

We’re challenging the old, rigid rental market.

The rental market, though, has been anything but flexible. We’re challenging the old, rigid rental market, which is increasingly more competitive. It’s tedious and stressful to find a rental home: you visit dozens of homes before finding the right one, fill out the applications and wait on a credit check, commit to a 12-month lease, and move in on the first of the month. This isn’t the rental market for today’s renter. What we offer at Zeus Living is a platform that gives today’s renters what they want: 

  • Easy, online browsing, booking, and billing
  • Beautifully designed homes outfitted with the essentials
  • Homes with fair prices in places they want to live
  • Flexible start and end dates
  • Non-traditional landlord who’s responsive to them

The Numbers – Renters

These recent trends are evident in our numbers. We reached 87% occupancy in 2021 YTD, our highest ever and up from 82% in 2020 and 84% in 2019. Residents have spent 1.4M+ nights with Zeus and 811,562 of those were during the pandemic. We saw a sixfold increase in residents booking leases with no predetermined end date, for an average stay of 129 nights—the ultimate flexibility. 25% of our residents expect to spend more than 10 months in furnished housing over the next 12 months. 

The Opportunity – Owners

The same trends in flexibility and remote work apply to new homeowners. While buyers want the financial security of owning a home—whether to live in or as an investment property—they don’t want to sacrifice flexibility or ease. Young investors from major metropolitan areas like Brooklyn, the Bay Area, or Boston are investing in homes in more affordable places. For some, these properties might one day become their primary residence. For others, these are traditional investment properties that technology has enabled them to buy in locations distant from their primary residence. Single family homes make up about one-third of the 46 million rental homes in the U.S., and nearly 98% of single-family rentals are operated by individuals, not institutions. This segment of the rental market is only growing. 

For owners who want to live in newly purchased homes, they don’t want to be tied to living in the home for 30 years. According to Roofstock, roughly 93% of investors on their platform are buying out of state and 75% are first-time investment buyers. Technology and access to data changed how people purchase and lease their homes. 

Like today’s renter, today’s owner wants a better experience of renting out a home—whether it’s an investment home or a home they’ve lived in.

Like today’s renter, today’s owner wants a better experience of renting out a home—whether it’s an investment home or a home they’ve lived in. We offer truly hands-off property management to owners, making it easy for them to purchase properties in a variety of locations, not just where they live. We then do the heavy lifting of furnishing the home and providing high quality floor plans, photos, and 3D video tours to showcase the home. With proprietary data, we can advise owners where to invest next, offering them a true partnership. Our model provides reliable and healthy income, a responsive customer service team, and the peace of mind that their homes are being well cared for. We make this asset class more accessible to busy professionals once intimidated by real estate investing, or stretched thin. 

The Numbers – Owners

We have a 97% partner renewal rate and have 5,000 curated homes across the U.S. in new cities like Austin, Miami, Portland, and Philadelphia, expanding from 2,400 homes in 2019 to almost 5,000 homes in 96 cities in 2021. Cities like Portland, Miami, San Diego, Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, Denver, and Atlanta have become more desirable than ever post-COVID.

More and more people are buying and leasing homes completely online. Tech and digital experiences have changed habits with homeowners and partners too. Nearly 40% of millennials say they’re comfortable buying a home online. We’ve had $40M in unmet demand over the past 12 months, proving the value of adding more homes and owners to our network. We know where people want to live and how much they’re willing to pay for flexible living. 

The Future

We’re often asked whether our data shows long-lasting or temporary trends. The answer is both. We’ve seen a recovery in our core markets. Cities like San Francisco and New York are seeing people return and new people wanting to try living in these cities for the first time. Other trends like experiences over things, flexibility, and mobility were simply accelerated by COVID-19. In addition, “home” as a product category became a lot more important. Our homes double up as spaces where we work, exercise, and socialize to a much higher degree than before. This is a trend we don’t see going away. 

With our Series C, we have a lot planned for the future. We like the way new board member Dean Carlson (Susquehanna) put it:

“SIG’s investment in Zeus Living is a reflection of how technology and exceptional customer service will power the way the world lives; with more ease, flexibility, and sustainability.” 

Here’s where we’ll focus in the next year:

  • Scale. We have a proven track record in finding residents for our homes; up next is growing our owner partnerships (single-family owners, multi-family owners, and developers) to increase our portfolio of homes. Efficient growth in both increasing our offering of homes and the demand for those homes is front and center. 
  • Invest in high quality, intentionally-designed online products for residents, owners, and operators. As we grow, we’ll bring new features, services, and products to our residents and owners that are relentlessly focused on their needs. 
  • Keep a laser focus on resident and owner satisfaction. The experience of our owners and residents are everything to our business. 
  • Integrate a curated set of services that make living with Zeus Living more than just the real estate, but a way to live life that is customized and adapted to residents.

We’re so excited about the future of FlexLiving and our role in bringing this style of living and owning to more people—delivering choice, convenience, and fair pricing. If you’re inspired and want to help make this happen, take a look at our open roles: we’re growing our team to help deliver this vision. And if you’re as excited about this future as we are, stay tuned and follow along. We’re glad to be on this journey with you.