Spotahome, the Spanish version of Airbnb for longer stays

Spotahome, the Spanish version of Airbnb for longer stays

The winner of the latest edition of South Summit is a 100% online platform that is responsible for visiting and personally checking all the properties they publish

   The Spanish rental startup Spotahome offers a disruptive model that seeks to revolutionize the real estate sector. It is an online platform similar to Airbnb that offers the most complete advertisements for apartments, rooms, studios and residences for students and professionals. The main difference with the American fashion website is that the rents must be longer than one month. Spotahome goes to the market of stays of medium and long term, covering all the non-vacation rental exceeding 30 days.

  So, although it is an online booking platform like Booking or Airbnb, they saw that "in the long-term sector there were no transactional models, all you found were traditional agencies or classified pages like Idealista or Fotocasa", says Alejandro Artacho, CEO and co-founder.

It is also the only "marketplace" that is responsible for visiting and personally checking all the properties that they offer. They take professional photographs, include plans, record high definition videos of the property and the neighborhood, and include very detailed descriptions. They show everything necessary so that the future tenant knows the property in its entirety without having to visit it.

Thus, these virtual visits place the future tenant inside the houses. They are videos in the first person made by those known as "runners", local people who are responsible for approaching the properties that are for rent to describe them in the best possible way and provide all the information to future customers.

To upload a home to the platform, it is usually the owners who contact them, but at other times it is the startup itself that accesses the owners, who are not just people, but real estate companies that are dedicated to buying or construction and subsequent rent.

Spotahome is "comfort and ease" for both owner and tenant, they say from the company. The first one must only be determined to rent, open the door to the "runner" and transmit their conditions (minimum rental time, whether or not pets are accepted, if smokers are accepted, etc.). In a few hours the ad will be on the web and the owner will start receiving reservations.

Functioning

The tenant should only open Spotahome, whose use is intuitive and adapts to any device, both computer and tablet and mobile. The first step is to choose the city where you are looking for a flat, filter the personal search criteria, choose the property that best suits your needs and select the period of time. The reservation is made 100% online through three different payment methods and the owner will confirm or decline the request.

"When the tenant reserves and pays the first month, we charge a small percentage of the rental contract, a portion that is five times less than what a traditional agency would take," says Artacho.

Right now the vast majority of homes offered are shared flats that are rented by rooms, perfect for students or people who find their first job. More than 1,300,000 nights have already been booked. Since they started they have moved in the market more than 25 million euros.

The good work done so far by Spotahome has led them to be the big winners of the 5th edition of the South Summit, among more than 3,000 companies around the world. Highlighting its innovation, the viability and the scalability of its technology. Thanks to this prestigious award, the Spanish company will enjoy greater financing, visibility and easy access to strategic agreements.

The first rental, in two hours

"We launched Spotahome in March 2014 and in less than two hours a Japanese booked for a year and a half.Cidentally the Japanese was in Madrid and looking for a flat in the city, then we only had nine properties, right now our network has more than 25,000 and it is constantly growing every day, "says the CEO. The workforce has also grown, four people started and currently there are 125 in the offices and almost 200 "runners".

Despite being a Spanish startup, it is currently available in 16 cities spread across ten countries: Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Seville, Granada, Rome, Milan, Paris, Lyon, London, Brussels, Berlin, Dublin, Vienna, Istanbul and Dubai.

"We want to continue expanding, we would like to enter Portugal and the Scandinavian countries, expand our area of ​​influence in Germany and of course reach the United States, the real estate world in New York is impressive, in Eastern countries such as Japan and China I think it would be a ball, it is proven that in all the places where we have arrived it has worked, we are in 10 countries, we have 182 ", says Artacho.

Everything offline to online

"We imagine Spotahome in the future as the largest online real estate company in the world, right now we are focused on the rental market but within the real estate sector there are millions of transactions through different business models that move billions of dollars," he says. the co-founder of the company.

Artacho says that his mission is "to identify everything that is transacted offline, how it is done and pass it online". In this way, the landlords will have greater comfort because they will not have to be awaiting visits and can manage all movements through the computer, smartphone or tablet. For the same tenant, "with Spotahome visits are virtual from home without having to date the owner."

In addition, owners may require access to payroll. "We have insurance that covers the non-payment of up to 75%, if a tenant rents for six months and goes to three, the owner can claim the other three months.