Airbnb Wants To Make Friends With Building Owners

Airbnb just got friendlier for multifamily building owners. The home-sharing platform launched its Friendly Building Program this month to provide a way for multifamily owners and community associations to share profits from resident hosting.

Airbnb head of multifamily housing partnerships Jaja Jackson, above with Grove International Partners head of portfolio management Adelina Rosen, spoke about the opportunities available to building owners during Bisnow’s recent Silicon Valley State of the Market event.

“We want to work with the multifamily community and to collaborate to make sure this business model does not become adversarial,” Jaja said.

The program offers incentives for owners including $1M of primary property and liability insurance and profit-sharing. Building owners are able to set the commissions, he said, adding participating in this program will be low-risk and without any operational load.

Jaja, above with Calvano Development owner Mark Calvano, said there’s no minimum number of units for a building owner to participate and the program will work with everything from small four-plex buildings to 100-unit complexes. He said it's likely one to three residents out of 100 units would host Airbnb guests, so owners don't have to worry about keeping track of a huge amount of guests at one time.

Once a building owner enrolls in the program, hosting residents will find their complex in the platform and will have access to the building owner’s home-sharing and revenue-sharing requirements. The system is set up so owners will receive direct payments and reports.

“They will know exactly what is happening at their property at all times,” said Jaja.

Jaja said having this type of amenity may become crucial to attracting tenants. Many professionals, including young Millennials, are actively seeking out residencies where they may have the opportunity to participate in home-sharing.

Jaja also said the program was Airbnb’s way to allow building owners to share in the platform's rapid growth. The home-sharing company now hosts over 100 million guests, offers over 1.5 million listings and covers 34,000 cities in 191 countries.