Leading full-service property management company Awayday has announced PriceLabs as its preferred revenue management partner to optimize revenue across its network of more than 11,500 vacation rentals across the U.S.
CHICAGO, IL, October 13, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– PriceLabs, a global leader in revenue management solutions, today announced a new partnership with Awayday, a leading full-service U.S. vacation rental property manager with a portfolio of over 11,500 properties. Awayday has chosen PriceLabs as its preferred partner to deploy its state-of-the-art dynamic pricing and automation tools, optimizing revenue strategy across its rapidly expanding network of local brands.
The partnership is poised to set a new standard in professional, high-quality property management, combining Awayday’s scale and operational excellence with PriceLabs’ best-in-class, AI-powered technology. Awayday has been rapidly growing its properties and brands under management, combining a local focus with national scale. To power this expansion, Awayday sought an innovative partner capable of meeting the complex demands of a large-scale, diverse property portfolio, with a team of revenue managers handling thousands of properties across the U.S.
Awayday’s decision came after a comprehensive evaluation process, including data science deep dives and head-to-head comparisons of various platforms. PriceLabs distinguished itself through the superior accuracy of its pricing algorithm, seamless user interface and a human approach to partnership.
Eric Schueller, EVP Revenue at Awayday, said: “As we scale, we need a partner whose vision for the future of revenue management aligns with our own – one where intelligent algorithms and smart revenue managers work together to drive superior results. We were looking for a true technology leader. PriceLabs’ advanced algorithm, combined with its intuitive user experience, gives our team the confidence that we can calibrate our pricing effectively and deliver the best possible returns for our homeowners. We have been impressed by the platform’s evolution and the team’s deep understanding of our needs.”
Anurag Verma, Co-Founder of PriceLabs, said: “We have immense respect for how the Awayday team has executed its vision and built a high-quality organization at scale. This partnership is a significant win and a powerful validation of our platform’s ability to perform for the industry’s top professional operators. We are thrilled to partner with a team that thinks so clearly about the future and we are excited to support their continued growth.”
This partnership underscores PriceLabs’ continued expansion and success in serving enterprise-level vacation rental companies, both in optimizing revenue and supporting robust reporting needs.
About PriceLabs
PriceLabs is a global revenue management platform for the hospitality industry. Operating since 2014, it powers pricing for 500,000+ listings worldwide. Learn more at Pricelabs.co.
About Awayday
Awayday is a leading vacation rental property platform composed of 30 local brands in vacation-focused destinations across the U.S. With more than 11,000 exclusive properties managed, Awayday provides property owners with a fully integrated suite of local services, including rental bookings, cleaning and housekeeping, maintenance and repairs, unit inspections, equipment rentals, and 24/7 customer support. For more, visit www.awayday.com.
According to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA): “To make this election, attach a letter signed by you to your income tax and benefit return of the year in which the change of use occurs. Describe the property and state that you want subsection 45(2) of the Income Tax Actto apply.”
So, there isn’t a specific form to file to claim this election.
A taxpayer in Canada may be able to extend the four-year limit indefinitely, but this requires your employer or your spouse’s employer to ask you to relocate. It sounds like you relocated in order to look for work, Hugh, so this extension will not apply.
Filing an election late
The 45(2) election is supposed to be filed in the year you move out of the home. The deadline is the tax filing deadline for your tax return that year. This would be April 30 for most taxpayers, and June 15 for those who are self-employed or whose spouse is self-employed.
The CRA can accept a late-filed subsection 45(2) election, if your situation matches one from a list of extraordinary circumstances.
There is jurisprudence to support late-filed election. In Irene Gjernes v. Canada Revenue Agency, the CRA was ordered to reconsider a disallowed 45(2) election that was filed late by the taxpayer despite no extraordinary circumstances.
For the late-filed election, the CRA can levy a penalty of the lower of $8,000 or $100 per month past the due date. If the tax savings are more than the penalty, a late-filed election may be worth the penalty risk.
Capital gains tax when changing the use of a property
Since a home that is converted into a rental property is subject to a deemed disposition at the time of conversion, the fair market value at the time the rental began is the adjusted cost base (ACB) for capital gains tax purposes. A subsection 45(2) election could defer this conversion date.
A stay in Brian Maggi’s house, per the Airbnb listing, is what coastal California dreams are made of.
“Bathed in natural sunlight,” it reads, you can “enjoy unobstructed panoramic views of the ocean and Point Reyes.” You can bring your dog. Walk to the sand. Savor “the perfect getaway” in the 1928 “BoHo surf shack.”
The little house in Dillon Beach, a remote town in western Marin County, is a second home for Maggi, a software designer who lives full time in Livermore, a hundred miles southeast.
He and his wife stay here a few weekends a month: Enough time to befriend neighbors and know the gossip, like who put in a new hot tub and who moved here to please a girlfriend despite hating the foggy weather.
“We’re not full-time residents,” Maggi said, “but we’re not absentee owners.”
“We’re really fortunate, and I get it,” Brian Maggi says of owning a second home in Dillon Beach. But he says cracking down on short-term rentals hasn’t made houses more affordable.
When Maggi is not using the house, he rents it on Airbnb for about $300 a night.
That’s a pretty common practice in Dillon Beach where, according to county estimates, a whopping 84% of the town’s 408 housing units are second homes and 31% are used as licensed short-term rentals.
Are those vacation rentals ruining California’s rugged little beach towns? Or are they opening up the coast to people who can’t afford to live there? Depends who you ask.
In Marin County, on the northern end of the San Francisco Bay, short-term rentals have become a lightning rod amid an affordable housing shortage in one of the most expensive — and beautiful — places in California.
This month, the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a hard cap on the number of short-term rentals it will allow in unincorporated places, including the bucolic towns hugging iconic Highway 1 and the Point Reyes National Seashore.
The ordinance imposes a cap of 1,281 short-term rentals for unincorporated Marin County, where there were 923 licensed as of January.
The county has placed specific limits for 18 coastal communities, most of which will be allowed no more than the existing number of short-term rentals — while some will have to reduce their numbers. The exception is Dillon Beach, a historic vacation town where the short-term rental market will be allowed to significantly grow.
Dillon Beach homeowner Paul Martinez walks home after surfing. “Rent it responsibly,” Martinez says about owners renting out their houses when they are not in town.
Mounted surfboards add to the charm of this colorful home in Dillon Beach.
In Point Reyes Station, population 383, there are 32 short-term rentals, according to the county. Under the new rules, 26 will be allowed. In Stinson Beach, the cap will allow the amount of rentals that currently exist: 192.
In Dillon Beach, vacation rentals will be allowed to grow 63%, from 125 to 204. The town has no school and the only businesses are a resort and its general store, which supervisors noted make for a different kind of community than many of the other towns dotting the Marin coastline.
County officials said they expect the number of existing short-term rentals to shrink through attrition. Current license holders will have to reapply and adhere to stricter regulations, which can include expensive septic upgrades. The new rules allow just one short-term rental property per operator, and licenses will not transfer to new owners if a property sells.
Debate over the issue has raised questions not just about limited housing in Marin, but also about whether Airbnbs have become a critical means of providing public beach access — a right enshrined in the California Coastal Act — in seaside towns with few hotel rooms.
“Please do not codify this anti-visitor, exclusionary behavior. Do not turn a region dense in coastal public recreational lands into an exclusionary playground that only the elite can access,” Inverness resident Rachel Dinno Taylor, founder of the West Marin Access Coalition, a citizens group that fought the measure, said in a speech last month before the California Coastal Commission.
The Coastal Commission regulates development in the Coastal Zone — which is generally the first 1,000 yards from the shoreline but extends a few miles inland in some areas — and increasingly is weighing in on local efforts to limit short-term rentals.
If it weren’t for vacationers — who fill the village with laughter and kids and wagons and dogs — Dillon Beach would be dead most days, residents say.
“Vacation rentals can provide important public access to the coast, especially where hotels are scarce. But without thoughtful guidelines, they can also have unintended impacts on local housing availability,” Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the Coastal Commission, said in a statement to The Times. “We think Marin County achieved the right balance for their unique and world-famous coastline.”
The West Marin Access Coalition, many of whose members rent out their homes and so have a financial stake in the debate, argued the county did not have enough data to prove short-term rentals directly affect housing availability. Many residents rely upon income generated by their rentals to afford staying in their homes, Sean Callagy, a member of the coalition, said in an email.
The county’s new policy, he wrote, will “create hardships for low- and middle-income residents, worsen housing insecurity and deny visitors access to the coast.”
An aerial view of Stinson Beach in Marin County.
For years, high-demand destinations across California — including Los Angeles city and county, Palm Springs, Malibu, Ojai and San Francisco — have tried to rein in rental platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, citing the need to prevent housing from being converted into de facto hotel rooms .
In Marin County, the explosive growth in short-term rentals has been particularly divisive in smaller towns. There, the number of full-time residents is dwindling while millionaires’ second — and third — homes, many of which are used as seasonal rentals, sit empty much of the year.
That’s a cruel paradox when there are not enough affordable homes for people who work in those communities, proponents of the cap say.
In unincorporated Marin County, the median sales price of a single-family home rose 98% from 2013 to 2021, to $1.91 million, according to a countywide housing plan adopted last year.
“Housing affordability and housing supply were really the driving factor in why we’re addressing short-term rentals right now,” said Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency. “There’s not housing being built. And the housing that’s available, people are just seeing that it’s more profitable and easier to use it as a short-term rental than to rent it out long term.”
Although Marin County has much open space, it has little room to expand housing. Roughly 85% of its land, including the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is public space or agricultural land protected from development.
Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who represents the scenic West Marin towns where vacation rentals are most heavily concentrated, said they have transformed “tiny communities where even losing a few homes is a big deal.”
“Our volunteer fire departments are losing volunteers,” he said. “Our schoolteachers, we’re having a hard time locating them in the community; they have to commute long distances.”
Visitors stroll through downtown Stinson Beach along Highway 1 in West Marin County.
The elementary school in Stinson Beach, he noted, is “having a hard time keeping its doors open” because so few children now live there. The town’s population, according to census data, plunged 38% from 2016 to 2022, to 371. In 2022, there were no children younger than 15.
According to county estimates, 27% of housing units in Stinson Beach are used as short-term rentals — many of which are in the gated neighborhood of Seadrift, a flood-prone sand spit.
The town has “become like Martha’s Vineyard on the West Coast,” said August Temer, co-owner of Breakers Cafe on Highway 1 in Stinson Beach. “It’s not people’s primary residence.”
August Temer, center, co-owner of Breakers Cafe in Stinson Beach, says as a business owner he likes Airbnbs and the tourists they bring. But it’s sad, he says, that his employees can’t afford to live in town.
Standing behind the outdoor bar on a windy afternoon last month, Temer, a 45-year-old who grew up in Stinson Beach, said that as a business owner he likes Airbnbs and the money-spending tourists they bring in. But it’s sad, he said, that none of his employees can afford to live in town and must commute — which makes it difficult to keep workers.
Mac Bonn, the general manager, said he drives 45 minutes “over the hill,” traversing a winding mountain road, to his home in Fairfax.
“We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,” says Bruce Bowser, seated with his wife, Marlie de Swart. “A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on.”
In nearby Bolinas, artist Marlie de Swart and husband Bruce Bowser welcomed the new rules, telling the Coastal Commission in a letter that their town “is being changed from a characteristic village to a vacation rental suburb.”
The county ordinance limits the number of short-term rentals in Bolinas to 54. There are now 63.
The septuagenarian couple bought their century-old house with picture windows and redwood ceilings in downtown Bolinas in 1992 for about $230,000. They were stunned when a nearby house recently sold for nearly $3 million after its owner died.
Alas, Google Maps directed tourists to Bolinas. And the Airbnbs kept them there.
Bolinas residents say neighbors have been replaced by short-term guests and empty second homes, making the town feel more like a vacation rental suburb than a cozy hometown.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
During the summers, De Swart said, the town is overrun by visitors whose cars idle on narrow streets for more than an hour as they wait to park. Neighbors have been replaced by short-term guests and empty second homes.
“We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,” Bowser said. “A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on. We used to look out on this valley, and there were a lot of lights at night. Now, it’s mostly dark.”
Sitting on the couple’s living room table was a copy of the Point Reyes Light newspaper. On Page 11 was a classified ad that read: “In Search of Affordable Home,” placed by their friend, Tess Elliott, the newspaper’s publisher.
“We are the publishers of the Point Reyes Light and the assistant fire chief at the Inverness Fire Department,” the ad reads. “Please help us become permanent residents and continue to contribute to the place we love.”
Elliott, 44, said she and her husband have been running such ads for years. The mother of two young children, Elliott and her family live in an Inverness house that has been “rented to us at well below market rate” for the last decade by “a generous family.”
“It’s very fragile,” she said of life as a renter in Inverness, a town of 1,500 on the Tomales Bay with 93 registered short-term rentals. “People with kids, like us, can only take that so long. You want some stability. You want to invest in a property.”
Lately, she said, “we aren’t feeling very hopeful.”
Frank Leahy, a software engineer, bought his house a mile northwest of the newspaper office in 2020 and got a short-term rental license just before the county, in 2022, enacted a two-year moratorium on new operating licenses.
Leahy and his wife live full time in Inverness. But they travel a few weeks a year and list their house, with a bocce court out front, on Airbnb for $300 to $500 a night. Leahy said the county clamped down too broadly on short-term rental owners, conflating those who rent their homes full time and others who, like him, only rent a few weeks a year.
“I can name people who live up and down the street. If those were just rentals? It would be kind of weird,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with people wanting to rent out their home for a short amount of time.”
Leahy said short-term rentals are being scapegoated for the housing shortage in a place where it is prohibitively difficult to build.
About four years before they bought their home, he and his wife purchased an empty hillside lot nearby, planning to build a house. It took years to get all of the permits and to have the required bird, bat, geological and traffic surveys done. During that time, the cost to build rose by several hundred thousand dollars, he said. They gave up and sold the land.
On a chilly Wednesday morning last month, Dillon Beach was virtually silent — save for the plop-plop of sandals worn by a lone wetsuit-clad surfer walking home, and the tinkling of raindrops on Maggi’s windows.
With its gloomy weather, bad cell service and lack of jobs, Dillon Beach, on the south end of Bodega Bay, isn’t for everyone, Maggi said.
“A lot of the bugs in this place are its feature,” said Maggi, 54. “There’s no town. There’s no main drag. … This place has always been made of vacation homes. It’s not conducive to full-time living. It’s really far from everything.”
If it weren’t for vacationers — who fill the village with laughter and kids and wagons and dogs — the place would be dead most days, he said.
Maggi and his wife bought the house in 2020, when they and their adult children were going stir-crazy amid the pandemic. It was a financial stretch, but renting it out has helped. A gregarious Illinois native, Maggi joked that he had become a “California cliche” — a middle-aged guy with a beach house, a cool van, a border collie mix and a surfboard, even though he can’t surf well.
“We’re really fortunate, and I get it,” he said. But he finds it “kind of shameless” for the county to use the affordable housing crisis to justify cracking down on short-term rentals. The two-year ban on new licenses, he said, did not suddenly make houses cheap.
“You had this moratorium!” he said with a laugh. “How’s your affordable housing going?”
First came the all-night parties and music blaring from a neighbor’s house in Long Beach that kept Andy Oliver up at night.
Then there were the “smoke outs,” when visitors enjoying refuge from hostile cannabis laws in their home states blazed marijuana throughout the day, sending clouds of hazy smoke into Oliver’s sanctuary, his house in the city’s College Estates neighborhood.
The final straw was on Jan. 2, when a shooting victim climbed over his fence, bleeding and looking for shelter.
In each case, the source of Oliver’s grief were tourists staying in an unhosted short-term rental next door. Such rentals are listed by homeowners who are not present during the guest’s stay, as with Airbnb.
“All this happened over a year’s time, and it was beginning to be too much,” Oliver, 50, said. “This is a residential area, and something had to be done.”
Fast-forward four months, and Oliver has successfully petitioned Long Beach’s Community Development Department to ban short-term rentals within College Estates. His win also spawned nine similar petitions around the city.
“I don’t have the final count, but there are something like 755 homes, and we just got enough signatures,” Oliver said. “I heard it was close and I don’t have confirmation of the final vote, but I was informed [last week] that we succeeded.”
Oliver’s victory was the culmination of nearly a year of work, which included trying the city’s complaint hotline, speaking with a councilmember and, ultimately, founding an online advocacy group, the Long Beach Safe Neighborhood Coalition.
For months, coalition members commiserated on the social media site Nextdoor over their frustrations with the short-term rentals, gathering momentum for a ban.
“The common theme that we kept running into was that this was a big deal for many residents and almost all of us got the runaround from the city of Long Beach,” Oliver said. “They didn’t seem to care.”
As short-term rentals have spread, the responses across Southern California have varied.
Currently, there are 626 non-primary short-term rentals registered in the city, according to the Community Development Department.
Jean Young, a 67-year-old technical writer, is among those with a short-term rental.
“I’m a part-time writer, and the income from rentals just smooths out the rough edges and has been wonderful,” she said.
Young splits her time between her three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Long Beach’s affluent Bixby Knolls neighborhood and one in the sprawling senior living community at Leisure World in Seal Beach, where she spends three or four months out of the year.
She began renting out a part of her Long Beach home 11 years ago to JetBlue and Southwest flight attendants in town between shifts, then turned it into a place of refuge for traveling nurses during COVID-19. Now Young hosts physical therapists and medical residents.
Sometimes she rents out the entire place.
“My son has since moved on to college and my mother passed away, so there’s all this room in my house to share,” she said. “It would be sad to lose that ability.”
Young said she understands the backlash from community members. The Jan. 2 shooting next to Oliver’s home on Kallin Avenue was “horrible” and an “abomination,” she said, but a citywide ban would ultimately be “damaging.”
Oliver said he initially tried other means.
He called the city’s hotline to complain about his neighbor’s rental, “but nothing was ever enforced.”
He reached out to a city councilmember and the city attorney.
Eventually, he had to go grassroots.
“There were two previous petition drives that failed, so I wasn’t sure if we would have success,” he said.
But whenever he was discouraged, he would think back to his encounters with rowdy neighbors.
In December, he said he spoke with a bunch of 20-somethings from Texas staying at his neighbor’s house, because the “insane amount of marijuana they were smoking” was floating into his home.
“They said recreational marijuana wasn’t allowed in Texas and they were going to take advantage of their time here,” he said.
Just a few weeks later, on Jan. 2, a man standing in front of an unhosted short-term rental in the 800 block of Kallin Avenue was shot in the lower body by an unknown gunman, according to Long Beach Police.
The home had been listed on Peerspace, an online marketplace for hourly rentals, Oliver said. The shooting is still under investigation.
The victim tried to climb Oliver’s fence and smeared blood on the gate as he crossed into the yard.
“My house was closed for hours due to an investigation,” he said.
As momentum for Oliver’s petition grew, help came from unexpected places.
Better Neighbors LA, a self-described coalition of hosts, tenants, housing activists, hotel workers and community members, footed Oliver’s $1,050 petition ban fee with the city.
“BNLA is happy to support neighbors like Andy in Long Beach as well as people and groups across Los Angeles County who want reasonable regulations on an out-of-control industry that affects their neighborhoods,” the group said in a statement.
Oliver said the group is also funding efforts to ban unhosted short-term rentals in nine other Long Beach communities, including El Dorado Park, Naples and South of Conant, where resident Stephen Carr is leading an effort.
Carr, a freelance photographer, said the ban was necessary after his neighbor’s home listed on Airbnb “turned into a hotel.”
He said one weekend last summer, guests in town for an electronic dance music festival stayed up every night.
“The music is blaring. There’s screaming and drunkenness spilling out into the front and back lawns till 3 a.m.,” he said. “One of the guests actually apologized the next day, but then they partied again till 4 a.m.”
Carr said he called the police, but they would only issue warnings. He also tried the city’s complaint hotline, but never received a call back.
Eventually, he found Oliver on Nextdoor and linked up with Better Neighbors LA, which he said funded his $1,050 petition fee.
“There’s no regulation, no help coming from anywhere,” Carr said.
For their part, the sites that host short-term rentals in Long Beach such as Airbnb, Peerspace and Vrbo, say they have outlets for residents to voice their concerns and point out problems.
Airbnb cited a city report in April that said the majority of its operators were “meeting compliance standards” and that there was “proactive and reactive” enforcement against violations.
The hosting site has a Community Disturbance Policy that bans parties and events that are disruptive, open-invite and that invite excessive noise, visitors, trash, littering and smoking, among other issues.
Neighbors witnessing issues or violations are encouraged to reach out to Airbnb’s support staff, a company spokesperson said.
Peerspace, meanwhile, said its sites rent out venues on an hourly basis including homes, photo studios, storefronts and banquet halls.
The company said it takes neighbor concerns seriously and asks anyone experiencing complications to reach out to its Trust and Safety team. It also said it had no listing for the home on Kallin Avenue on Jan. 2, when the shooting victim climbed into Oliver’s backyard.
The Joshua Tree property, which looks like a horizontal reflective skyscraper resting in the desert, was listed for $18 million last year — making it the most expensive house ever built in Joshua Tree, a bit over two hours east of Los Angeles.
Over 400 days later, according to its Zillow listing, and after many short-term rentals and plenty of interest from potential buyers — ranging from celebrities to billionaires to art collectors — there are still no takers.
While the 5,500-square-foot home, known as the Invisible House, has attracted a lot of known figures such as Alicia Keys and Demi Lovato, along with influencers and brands Hermés and BMW, finding a buyer has proven a challenge for Aaron Kirman and Matt Adamo of AKG Christie’s International, who represent the property owner.
The uniqueness of the home, the high price range for its remote location and a challenging 2023 market were all contributing factors, according to Adamo.
“It makes it much more difficult,” he said. “2023 one of the hardest markets that we faced, and the buyer pool for this is small, 3 percent of the buyers who are looking.”
Selling a property of this type doesn’t come easy even in a robust market like Joshua Tree, where the average home price is $450,000.
“Joshua Tree is a hot market despite the high interest rates, has really gained traction and scaled even over the last five years, especially during the pandemic,” said Tyler Neale, an agent at Sotheby’s International Realty who’s not associated with the listing. “It’s a popular place for Angelenos, and yet this property is an outlier from the norm in that market in every way.”
“Most spectacular” Airbnb
The character of the property has everything to do with the owner, the film producer and artist Chris Hanley, who along with his wife Roberta were drawn to Joshua Tree and purchased the land there.
The Hanleys were behind movies such as “American Psycho,” “Virgin Suicides” and “Spring Breakers.”
The concept for the Invisible House originated over a decade ago, when Chris Hanley came up with the design and approached Polish American architect Tomas Osinski to bring it to life. Its name describes how the house reflects the surrounding sky, rock and sand in a way that the structure seems to disappear into the landscape.
They began construction in 2013. The design is inspired by New York, where Hanley grew up “feeling comfortable with the monoliths.”
The home is located on a 90-acre property on the border with Joshua Tree National Park, making it the largest parcel of land that shares a border with the park. It was completed in March 2019.
It’s clear Hanley was involved in every inch of the home’s creation.
“It has 36-inch steel beams, maybe the biggest of any residential house in California,” he said proudly.
The house also has sustainability features, including a fully solarcool glass exterior with reflective light filtering and a solar thermal smart system for controlling the pool and hot water.
Once the couple built it, the plan was to live in it.
“We never thought in a million years that it was going to end up being some influencer house,” Hanley said.
As they had more guests come over, the house generated more and more interest from people they didn’t know.
“By the time Alicia Keys came in 2020, she wanted it for five weeks,” Hanley recalled. “So the house is kind of like one of these science fiction forms — it was no longer just Chris and Roberta Hanley’s residential dwelling, it had taken on a form in social media and media at large.”
Eventually it became one of the most desirable Airbnbs in the world, with CEO Brian Chesky calling it a “piece of modern art” and “one of the most spectacular homes in the world on all of Airbnb.”
After that, things really took off and the Hanleys started making rental income from brands including Hermés, BMW and others.
“The amount of income that comes, it’s better than most office buildings,” Adamo said. “You’re getting a potential 6 percent CAP rate.”
Joshua Tree was in fact one of the top two short-term rental markets in California and one of the top 25 in the U.S., according to AirDNA data cited by The New York Times.
Hanley said the house generates around $900,000 each year since 2021 in net income.
That may still not be enough for most buyers to justify the listing price.
“There is no Airbnb price or nightly rate that will make a property of $18 million cash flow that’s practical,” Neale said in reference to the rental revenue. “It’s a hard proposition even as a short-term rental at that price.”
“I don’t think it’s inflated, because it is a piece of art, but it is a hard proposition,” he noted.
“Pyramid in Egypt”
The decision to sell came when the Hanleys realized that the house was getting big and they were ready to move on to other projects.
“When I make a movie, it needs to get out, it needs to be experienced,” Hanley said. “And this was starting to get so experienced by so many people.“
While they have a property management company, they are not looking to become landlords long-term.
“We’re not in the hospitality business,” he said. “We’re creating new forms.”
They’re already on to the next project, which is the Starburst House located nearby in Joshua Tree.
Starburst House
Hanley has big ambitions for his properties and is not shy about it.
“It’s become this kind of social destination, very much like a pyramid in Egypt or something like that, where you just want to go to see this form,” he explained. “It somehow relates to the world at large, there’s some thought that there’s an interaction between extraterrestrial or other life forms or other forms of consciousness that are constantly taking place.”
Needless to say, not everyone can afford to stay at the Invisible House, but everyone can at least follow the Instagram account. It’s available for rent from $2,689 to $7,500 per night, according to property manager Fieldtrip Hospitality.
Demi Lovato was one guest who said she saw aliens there, as per The Wall Street Journal, and the buyer is likely to be someone who has an appreciation for metaphysical experiences, real or imaginary.
The agents trying to sell the property have their work cut out for them: They’ve had a hard time imagining the ideal buyer.
Speaking about potential buyers, Adamo was nostalgic for a minute about the crypto craze of 2021, when newly minted millionaires were quick to invest in real estate and would appreciate the artistic vision behind the property.
“We’ve had billionaires, investors from other countries and everything in between,” he said. “We’ve had brands and CEOs look at this for company retreats, art collectors.”
They had one proposal to build “something in the metaverse” and an idea of partial ownership, which didn’t work out.
Given the level of public and social media interest the house has generated, the buyer is unlikely to be a recluse or a hermit. There is a public performance aspect to the space.
Still, the image of the perfect buyer remains elusive.
“We haven’t figured out who the perfect buyer is for the property, because if we had it would be sold by now,” Adamo said.
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -The Albany community met Thursday evening on short-term rentals as housing has become a point of concern. This includes services such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
The first discussion of short-term rentals welcomed over 50 participants and centered around one question: “What do you think a successful short-term policy looks like?”
Organizers from the City say regulating these rentals has been talked about for almost a year. After a presentation from Neighborhood and Community Services, neighbors paired up to voice their views.
“We don’t have any plans as of right now but we’re contemplating a potential regulatory system and we want to hear what people want to think and what ideas they have,” stated Director of Planning, Brad Glass.
Attendees mentioned trash and noise issues caused by parties and safety issues in shared spaces of short-term and long-term renters. The City is looking into ways to hold landlords, or hosts, accountable and effectively involve police when needed.
“The absentee landlord, the negligent landlord, has been the consistent issue in regards to short-term rentals,” described 7th Ward Councilman, Sergio Adams.
“Hear what the responses are from the host and how the hosts are addressing that. Just from our initial conversation, I think it’s been overwhelmingly positive,” added Host, Joshua Biernat.
Some call short-term rentals affordable tourism while others argue long-term rentals have been evicted to make them. Adams sees Capital Region attractions like the Belmont Stakes and local events such as the New York State Black Latino Caucus as reasonable ways to bring and keep revenue in Albany.
“Right there by the Capitol anyone who is operating an Airbnb is getting money. You have individuals, who are professionals, who are looking for a place that is safe, clean, and convenient.”
When it comes to a lack of affordable housing, Biernat says an owner of four Albany Airbnbs that the issue is not people like him. Instead, he blames the construction of new homes declining around COVID.
“We’ve been playing catch-up. You add the rates, you add the price increases, everything. It’s no wonder we’re in the housing situation we are. It was not created by Airbnb. It was created by bad policies during COVID.”
The Council’s Law Committee will continue to discuss short-term rental legislation on February 7 starting around 6:15 p.m. at City Hall.
Convinced that the boom in leisure travel is permanent, Airbnb aims to expand its listings by convincing more people to turn their homes into short-term rentals.
The company said Wednesday that it will increase the amount of liability coverage for hosts, up to $3 million, in a play for owners of nicer houses in high-cost places such as California. It will also pair newbies with a “superhost” to guide them through the process of becoming a short-term landlord, from signing up through welcoming their first guest.
More listings would not seem to be Airbnb’s biggest challenge.
CEO Brian Chesky says the San Francisco company is taking steps to make price more transparent when consumers browse Airbnb listings, and he predicts that will reduce sky-high cleaning fees that many hosts tack on well into the booking process — a major complaint of consumers.
The company also continues to try to crack down on large parties at rentals, a few of which have turned violent. And it faces efforts to increase regulation of short-term rentals.
Through it all, Airbnb has fared better than most travel companies during the pandemic. This month, it reported a record $1.21 billion profit for the third quarter. Its stock fell, however, because earnings and bookings were less than Wall Street expected and the company gave a cautious fourth-quarter outlook.
Investors worry that consumers paying more for food, gas and housing — and facing predictions of recession — will cut back on discretionary spending like travel, hurting Airbnb.
Some current hosts are worried that might already be happening. Last month, a post on a Facebook page for Airbnb “superhosts” asked, “Has anyone seen a huge decrease in bookings over the last 3 to 4 months? We went from at least 50% occupancy to literally 0% in the last two months.”
Other hosts on social media have suggested theories ranging from a fragile economy to pent-up travel demand finally running out, and some think the problem might be that Airbnb already has too many listings.
AirDNA, which tracks short-term-rental numbers, said Airbnb listed nearly 1.4 million rentals in the U.S. in September, a 23% jump from a year earlier and 9% over 2019. Nearly two-thirds were added since 2020. The trends are similar for global listings.
Chesky said in an interview that Airbnb has enough hosts now — he didn’t say it has too many — but needs more because leisure travel will keep growing. And, he said, a recession could push more people to turn their homes into Airbnbs. After all, he likes to point out, Airbnb launched during the great recession in 2008.
“People are pulling back spending in tons of areas, but not travel,” he said. “And with a looming recession, we felt like more people than ever are going to want to make extra money.”
Potential hosts sometimes hesitate, Chesky said, because they are uncomfortable having strangers in their homes. The company’s response is to triple the amount of coverage for hosts — from $1 million to $3 million — against damage, including to vehicles, boats and a wider range of art on the property.
Chesky is betting that will persuade more owners of nice homes to list them on Airbnb.
“Exactly, and home values have increased since we wrote the $1 million plan,” he said. “We just noticed more than 20% of the homes on Airbnb, and maybe even more than that, were over the $1 million limit in value.”
The company said it is also launching a system to verify the identity of guests and flag potential parties, immediately in the U.S. and Canada and worldwide by next spring. Chesky said the system is “not a silver bullet,” and he didn’t provide many details but said in the U.S. it will include a check of criminal and sex-offender records.
In the meantime, the company is working on a plan to display the all-in price of a stay up front on its app and website — an amount that would include cleaning fees, which can be very high and only appear later in the booking process.
Chesky said he didn’t want to bar or cap cleaning fees — that’s a decision for hosts, he said. But including fees in the upfront price — and in the order in which search results are displayed — “is going to correct the market,” he said.
Alternative accommodation leader Stay Alfred to continue rapid expansion of its travel apartments with Series B funding.
Press Release –
updated: Oct 5, 2018
SPOKANE, Wash., October 4, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Stay Alfred, the hospitality startup that pioneered the travel apartment concept in the alternative accommodation space, announced Wednesday it has secured Series B funding totaling $47 million. Led by Nine Four Ventures, a Chicago-based, vertically integrated real estate technology fund, the new investment will support Stay Alfred’s ongoing rapid expansion in current and future markets. The latest round brings the company’s total funding to date to $62 million.
“Stay Alfred is leading the emerging wave of companies driving the evolution of the real estate industry and defining a new hospitality segment. Combine that with a tenacious, always-do-better culture and we believe they’re building something special,” said Nine Four General Partner Kurt Ramirez.
Stay Alfred is leading the emerging wave of companies driving the evolution of the real estate industry and defining a new hospitality segment. Combine that with a tenacious, always-do-better culture and we believe they’re building something special.
Kurt Ramirez, General Partner, Nine Four Ventures
Founded in 2011, Stay Alfred has grown to nearly 2,000 travel apartments across 28 top U.S. markets, has hosted nearly 500,000 guests, and has a projected 2018 run rate of $110 million. While the alternative accommodation space continues to spawn new players in response to increased traveler demand, this three-time veteran of Inc. Magazine’s 500 and 5000 lists has established a unique and rapidly scalable foothold in downtown neighborhoods through its distinctive multi-unit model.
“We recognized that most options in our industry lacked the consistency that travelers still seek, even as those travelers pursue alternatives to the bland shoeboxes of the traditional hotel offering,” said Jordan Allen, CEO of Stay Alfred. “We’ve focused on developing the infrastructure and expertise to deliver not only a consistent, high-end experience for our guests, but for our developer partners as well.”
Stay Alfred holds full building and multi-floor long-term partnerships with leading developers and property management companies across the country. Allen credits Stay Alfred’s success to its superior operational experience, in-house regulatory expertise, next-generation hospitality tech platform and ability to design flexible short-term rental programs to meet the needs of each building.
Allen predicts that the travel apartment model will become a core component of multifamily properties in every major travel destination, with traveler demand sufficient to support tens of thousands of units. Under the Stay Alfred model, multifamily property owners enjoy a boost to net operating income, and an added amenity to their buildings.
“Stay Alfred is led by a fantastic team that understands what travelers want and how to provide them the best, most consistent travel experiences. The company is executing on an extensive, thoughtful roadmap, and we’re thrilled to be involved,” said Nine Four Ventures and Laramar Group founder Jeff Elowe.
For additional information, contact: Jeanne Ryan Email: jeanne.ryan@stayalfred.com Mobile: 509-842-0150
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ABOUT STAY ALFRED
Stay Alfred offers upscale travel apartments in the walkable downtown neighborhoods of 28 U.S. cities and counting. Our next-generation booking process, 24/7 customer service and professional housekeeping staff provide guests with the reliability of a hotel stay, while our spacious accommodations with a kitchen, laundry and private bedrooms give guests the convenience of an apartment. We live to offer travelers “Your place in the city.” For more information or to book, visit StayAlfred.com.
ABOUT NINE FOUR VENTURES
Nine Four Ventures is a vertically integrated venture capital fund that invests in technology companies impacting real estate and the built world. Nine Four partners with the Laramar Group, a national real estate owner and manager with 30 years of multi-asset investment experience, to provide portfolio companies with an environment where they gain access to the counsel, relationships, tools, and capital needed to succeed. The Nine Four Ventures Laboratory empowers companies with an expansive portfolio of properties to test, develop and refine their concepts and services for today’s rapidly evolving real estate market. For more information, visit ninefour.vc.
