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Short-Term Rental Managers Look to Data for Smarter Pricing

Sean O'Neill photo
Sean O'Neill
rastegar sonder property 1899 McKinney Avenue in Dallas Texas source rastegar

Photo Credit: An illustration of a planned high-rise at 1899 McKinney Avenue in Dallas, Texas, that will be built by Rastegar Property and operated on a short-term and extended-stay basis by Sonder, a rental tech startup. Rastegar Property

Skift Take

Nowhere is the need for a more tech-driven, business-oriented model for setting rates more clear than with short-term rental property management companies. Several startups aim to supercharge rate-setting with data-powered insights. But there's probably too many of these young companies for them to all survive long-term.

When Rastegar Property announced earlier this month it would build a 270-unit high-rise in Dallas, the real-estate developer said it planned to hand operations over to Sonder, a rental management company that offers branded, hotel-like lodging for short-term and extended stays. Rastegar had many reasons to find Sonder appealing, but one is that the startup belongs to a wave of companies promising to leverage a rising prowess in setting rates, a practice the industry calls revenue management. Sonder runs the numbers to learn how much rental inventory any given market can handle and decide what rates to set to earn maximum revenue. The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2012 and having raised $360 million, has spent a few year

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