THE AIRBNB FOR RESIDENTIAL RENTALS

Here’s a trend no one likes: For the past few years, nearly one-third of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 have reported living with their parents, according to Pew Research Center— making it the most common living arrangement for that age group. It’s not hard to understand why. In places like San Francisco and Denver, Trulia’s data reveals, a one-bedroom apartment’s cost has jumped 30 percent or more in the past five years. “Rent growth is just completely decoupled from income growth,” says Andrew Collins, CEO and co-founder of Bungalow, which offers a solution. Bungalow, currently operating in seven U.S. cities, is an Airbnb-like platform that makes it easy to find roommates or to rent out one’s apartment—thus, potentially, bringing more units on to the market. Especially when you consider that all renters come prescreened, unlike those on, say, Craigslist, where any stranger you agree to live with or sublet to could turn out to be a deadbeat (or worse). For homeowners, it’s a turnkey way to turn a family apartment into income, without the need to interview for tenants or fears they’ll trash the place. (Bungalow supplies weekly cleaning.) Airbnb has been criticized for driving up rents by incentivizing owners to take units off the rental market, but, says Collins, Bungalow will have the opposite effect: “For homeowners who don’t want to be part of the problem, we’re able to say, ‘Hey, we’re the easy button.’ ”