Idea
Long-term sublease arbitrage: master-lease apartments, rent by the month
Sam describes Bill Smith's company Landing: lease whole apartments, then sublease them to people who want to stay a month-plus. The wedge is fees — Airbnb's ~10% fee makes a $10k/month stay cost $1k extra; undercut that and monthly nomadic living becomes normal.
“what it is is they lease out apartments in different places and they take the whole lease and then they sublease it because for people who want to stay for a month. And the thing about Airbnb is that they actually charge— what's the fee? 10% if you're staying for 2 weeks.”
Steal thisMaster-lease units and resell monthly stays, undercutting Airbnb's per-night fee structure for medium-term renters.
Idea
Landing: a membership network of furnished apartments
Sam highlights Hello Landing (from Shipt founder Bill Smith): a $200/year membership giving access to furnished apartments across 13 cities, letting nomadic renters move month-to-month, e.g. a $3,000 Austin two-bedroom.
“They've got 13 major cities. You pay $200 for a yearly membership, and then you select a variety of furnished apartments, and then you get like a slight discount on, uh, staying there for a month at a time. So for example, they have a $3,000 2-bedroom apartment that's available July 2nd in Austin, and then you could spend a little bit more money and go to, uh, D.C., things like that.”
Fact
Why fixed-lease housing networks can't flex like Airbnb
Shaan's risk read on Landing-style businesses: because they sign fixed leases on every unit, their costs stay fixed even when demand drops, unlike Airbnb whose cost basis falls with revenue, leaving them exposed to vacancy gaps.
“You know, it's one of those, it's one of those situations unlike Airbnb, where for Airbnb, they don't pay to lease all the places. So when demand goes down, sure, their revenue goes down, but their cost basis also goes down. Whereas for these guys, their costs are going to be fixed, essentially, because they're going to be locked into all these leases. So they can't withstand kind of the normal demand fluctuations that other Airbnb-type site could do.”
Steal thisBefore backing an asset-heavy marketplace, check whether costs flex with demand or stay fixed through downturns.