All Forum Posts by: Kristina Cudworth

I've worked in the Corporate Housing industry for many years and watched Zeus Living, and other companies with  similar models, start-up and rapidly expand.  Zeus is in a number of markets and at last count, I believe had over 350 units/locations  in the Seattle market.  I know from some of the multi-family buildings they lease in, they signed 2 year leases and demanded one month free rent.  Typically the standard multi-family type leases have a lease break of a few month's rent, pay back the concession and forfeiture of the deposit.  If Zeus Living plans on staying in business, they'll need the relationships to be good with the larger property management companies as that's where they get their depth of inventory, not only in Seattle but their other markets as well.  

Their revenue share model looks bad, if anyone considers it, try to only pay furniture rent & operations costs when the unit is occupied.  If Zeus is  "renting" the furniture (I think they rent from a new company called furnish or habitat), they may already have this scheme in place (getting furniture rent credits for vacant days).  If Zeus owns the furniture, then they should be willing to not charge you any furniture/houseware cost when the unit is vacant.  If they are inflexible and you still want to work with them, you may want to just purchase furniture, as that furniture is probably only about $3,500 cost for a one bedroom space, and if it's in place and you've had guests stay, it's already used. Also, you may want to find out from them how many properties they will end up with (the ones they have to pay rent on) as they will be pushing those to be filled first.  If they only have to pay you when it's full, and they are getting "operational costs" what's their incentive to fill your unit when they have obligations to pay full rent and other costs on the units they've leased direct...  Most multi-family property management companies won't do rev shares.

 If you are following Airbnb, you'll see that they have refunded the "guests",  leaving the property owners high and dry. Not sure if Airbnb is just an investor or if they have any oversight on Zeus.  No one knows how soon business for corporate housing / vacation rentals will pick back up.  If it were my property, I'd probably try to get it leased with a long term renter, at least for the next year or two.    Hope this is helpful.