Corporate Housing Specialists (CHS) Experience

[Jordan Tebbs]

Hello BP!

I own a rental in Portland, Maine and am currently looking for tenants.  An acquisition specialist from Corporate Housing Specialists reached out to me asking if I would be interested in renting to their company.  Seems like a great deal on paper, they do all of the legwork and are insured (property management, furnishing, cleaning, landscaping, minor maintenance, etc.) but I can't seem to find any reviews/testimony on their behalf that don't come from their website.  They mostly rent and sublet corporate housing in the Denver area and just wondering if anyone has any experience with them.  Essentially they market themselves as a free property management service.  Hesitant as things that sound too good to be true, usually are.

Their only required lease clauses (added to my standard lease) are: 

- allowance of subletting

- Option to renew an additional year at same terms with no more than 10% rent hike

- Option to terminate lease with 60 days notice to landlord in response to laws/regulations passed that inhibit business activities directly related to CHS business model with no penalty

If anyone has any experience with this company would love to hear it!  Thanks so much!

[Bryant Hawthorne]

Did more homework. The company is new ~Spring 2022. You can find that on their domain registry. The founder is a serial entrepreneur (easy to find him on TikTok/LinkedIn). They find properties and then use an arbitrage model and sublease on AirBnB. They make money on the margins since the nightly rate on an AirBnB x nights per month can be a lot higher. If the company is willing to take on the risk to make sure the house is booked enough to make a profit, then the business model doesn't sound horrible. Pretty creative actually... 

What rubs me the wrong way is the storytelling of "I have a medical professional client who is looking for a property." They seem to wrap the "company" around this story (including their website) which seems a bit BS and hides the fact this is just likely an AirBnB... You can find evidence of that on this guys TikTok. Seems like a bit sketchy business practice and I question the ethics involved with this. I would have been more comfortable with them being open about the business model which I honestly think is pretty creative... If this was the case I would have likely done it.

I love the entrepreneurial nature of thinking outside the box here but question the ethics... I'm going to pass.