Zeus Living, a furnished apartment provider geared toward
business travelers staying 30 days or longer, has expanded to the New York City
area. The company now offers housing in Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens
and Hoboken and Jersey City in New Jersey.
The San Francisco-based company launched in 2015 and has
been operating 1,600 apartments in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, and
Washington, D.C. Units vary from studios to four-bedrooms and include
high-speed Wi-Fi, laundry, and furnishings and home goods from Helix Sleep,
Parachute Home, Article, Made In, Material and Public Goods. Clients have
included Disney, Uber, Deloitte and Genentech.
Zeus CEO Kulveer Taggar told BTN the average stay is between
two and three months. "It's about 50 percent individual owners and 50
percent larger owners, and about 50 percent single-family condos and homes and
50 percent in larger buildings." In D.C., Zeus manages an entire new,
47-unit property near Dupont Circle. The owners like the fact that "we
aren't a short-term rental company so there is less wear and tear on the
building."
While Zeus does have a corporate sales team and sells
directly to businesses, the company typically works with larger companies'
mobility teams or relocation management companies, and guests are often interns
or working on long-term projects.
Taggar sees opportunity beyond extended-stay hotels and traditional
corporate housing. Those can be "cookie cutter," he said. "If
comparing to traditional corporate housing, whenever we've done price
comparisons, we are about 40 percent more affordable. For example, a
one-bedroom in Oakwood is about $10,000 per month in summer, and a one-bedroom
on Zeus in San Francisco in the summer is $5,000 to $6,000 per month. In the
Bay Area, I've had customers tell me they can pay $800 per night for hotels.
When Salesforce has a conference, sometimes it's cheaper to rent a Zeus unit
for a month than pay a hotel for seven days."