US Mortgage Rates Drop, Giving House Hunters More Buying Power
Mortgage rates in the US declined, helping to ease affordability challenges for homebuyers.
Latest Videos
The information you requested is not available at this time, please check back again soon.
Mortgage rates in the US declined, helping to ease affordability challenges for homebuyers.
Country Garden Holdings Co., one of China’s biggest property developers, warned it will miss a deadline for reporting annual results, further complicating plans to restructure its debt following a default last year.
More New Yorkers have stopped paying their property taxes — a troubling trend since the onset of the pandemic that city officials attribute to the end of a tax-lien sales program that punishes delinquency.
US consumer sentiment rose markedly toward the end of March, supported by strong stock-market gains and expectations that inflation will continue to ease.
Pending sales of previously-owned homes in the US recovered last month after declining at the start of the year, adding to evidence that the housing market is gradually improving.
Sep 27, 2019
Bloomberg News
,In the past year, hotel chains and home-sharing sites have started encroaching on each other’s turf. Airbnb Inc. advertises hotel rooms on its platform and Marriott International Inc. recently launched a home-stay offering.
The latest player to blur the lines is short-term rental startup Sonder. The San Francisco-based hospitality company is expanding beyond its network of custom-designed vacation apartments, signing leases with 17 rundown mom-and-pop style hotels in New York, London, Dublin and other cities in recent months — and is negotiating an additional 40 properties.
Sonder targets the sweet spot between a home and a hotel, merging the vibe of an Airbnb in a hip neighborhood with the convenience of a hotel’s 24/7 concierge and professionally cleaned sheets. Sonder advertises its units on Airbnb and Expedia Group Inc.’s Vrbo, complying with local rules and regulations in the 21 cities where it operates.
After raising US$225 million in a funding round in July, valuing the company at more than US$1 billion, Sonder decided to veer away from its traditional short-term rental model and elbow its way into the hotel industry.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Francis Davidson says Sonder will be raking in more revenue than Marriott by 2025. That won’t be easy: The world’s largest hotel company had revenue of US$21 billion last year and manages more than one million rooms.
By contrast, Sonder has 10,000 listings, albeit five times as many as it did a year ago. Moreover, its business model has some unwelcome parallels. Leasing space under long-term deals for short-term stays is what led WeWork Cos. to accumulate a pile of debt, which generated investor blow back and ultimately forced the postponement of its public market debut.
“We have seen how bad the reception was for WeWork doing leases and how it eats into profitability, especially in the initial phase when the company signs all these leases,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. “The question is, what is it technologically that differentiates them from hotel chains — why would anybody pick a Sonder over a hotel?”
Davidson says Sonder can charge 20 per cent less than a four-star hotel, using technology to reduce costs and provide guests with a seamless on-app check-in, keyless entry and a mobile concierge. “Our big edge over hotels is that their model hasn’t evolved in the last 40 years,” Davidson says, adding that Sonder’s units are typically found in neighborhoods that major hotels don’t usually occupy.
The company has taken over old hat factories, police stables and small historic hotels like Philadelphia Queen Hotel, The Abbey Hotel in Miami or the Flatiron Hotel in New York.
Chirag Patel, who runs a family business of 10 small hotel properties in California, working with Sonder has removed his daily administrative tasks without denting his profits. “You get a fresh new look instead of the regular old 40 to 50 rooms that all look pretty much the same,” he says.
Lodging researcher and former New York University hospitality dean Bjorn Hanson says Sonder will likely come as a relief to mom-and-pop hotel owners like Patel, who may be tired of operating in a highly volatile market. At least with Sonder, “they pay the lease, they bear the risk,” he says.