The NHS is to pilot a new ‘Airbnb-style’ scheme in which home-owners will be paid £1,000 a month to host patients in their spare rooms in a bid to alleviate ‘bed blocking’ in hospitals.
The patients will be those newly discharged from hospital, but who lack support in their own communities.
The partnership is with start-up company CareRooms.
Separately, rentals website Spotahome that allows letting agents and private landlords to list medium- to long-term rents for overseas visitors has attracted $16.1m (£14.3m) of venture capital funding.
The financial backing has come from Passion Capital and Seaya Ventures and takes the total amount of venture capital funding for the firm to $25m (£22.2m) since launch in 2014.
Spotahome said the funding will be used to strengthen and extend its reach in existing markets and to invest in technology and more staff.
Alejandro Artacho, chief executive and co-founder of Spotahome, said: “This round is a significant boost that will allow us to continue our revolution of real estate.
“This sector has always had the scourge of being too traditional and not very innovative. At Spotahome, we are working hard to change this. Our mission is to reinvent real estate making it transparent, instant and exciting – loved at last.”
Spotahome lists mid- to long-term rental properties from private landlords based in 16 major cities across the world, mainly in Europe, and launched in London last year, attracting more than 3,000 listings.
Unlike Airbnb, the website checks properties itself and takes its own images.
Properties can be rented for a minimum of 30 days and tenants pay a deposit and rent to the landlord and a booking fee to the platform calculated based on the length of stay and rental price.
If a tenant leaves without paying, Spotahome will cover one month’s rent.
The site also offers up to €500 for any damage that isn’t covered by the deposit but its terms and conditions suggest this doesn’t include cleaning costs and cosmetic damage.
However, the platform has stark differences to using a traditional landlord or letting agent and even Airbnb, mainly that there is no independent arbitration should there be deposit disputes.
EYE queried this on the website’s chat function, see below, and was told that the platform only deals with transferring the first month’s rent and taking a commission, but any disputes would have to be resolved between the tenant and landlord.
Spotahome isn’t the only online platform attracting institutional investment.
Another technology company, GuestReady, which provides an Airbnb management service to help home owners prepare, list and rent out their property in return for a fee starting at 12%, has attracted £2.3m of venture capital investment.
The company, which has also acquired a similar rival called Easy Rental Services, has a portfolio of around 600 apartments in London, Paris, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. As well as listing on Airbnb, it also advertises properties on short-let platforms including HomeAway and Booking.com.
I’ve been very quiet on PIE recently.
Most regular readers will remember me as mrharvey – one of the reasons I’ve gone quiet is because I moved to Madrid… to work for Spotahome!
The company is mighty impressive and has realistic ambitions of becoming a global, online lettings agent. This funding is not a fluke and since its inception Spotahome has started to make serious headway in the Spanish and Italian markets in particular.
The next step is for us to come and have a go at you lot in England, haha!
Their approach to online agency (though they’re not strictly an online agent) is one that is far more transparent and customer focused than PB, for example. The company uses “home checkers” to provide guided tours of properties so that potential tenants needn’t visit the property before moving in.
And unlike PB, you only pay if you get to move in! Who would have that would endear customers to you, eh? Not just milking them for all they’re worth.
As a start-up there are still some creases to iron out, but Spotahome has the business model and momentum to go the distance. I’ll put a fiver on it.
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That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read – if a patient is in hospital it is because they are ill in some form or another and need taking care of – we cannot simply send them out into private rooms with no care and then they become so called ‘tenants’ – with the responsibility moving to the owner of the property!
What kind of care would they be getting and also what does the property owner take on board, this could be seen from both sides:
From the property owner, it could be an easy £1000 pcm giving up your spare room to someone you don’t know but more importantly could be mentally ill and that property owner has not been trained to care appropriately, worse case scenario the property owner could just be renting out a damp room to get the money and not give a damn about the person in it!
From the patient or tenant as they will be called, they are poorly and need care either physically or mentally – they have been isolated in a single room in a strange home with no care and nobody to talk to – disaster waiting to happen – and who will be paying for this – presumably council tax!
Let me think of an alternative – yes that’s it, bring back care homes, nursing homes, convalescence homes – invest that money into a caring community facility just as it was before when it worked very well thank you – and give a job to lots of carers that are being exploited by private homes – solution resolved to a ridiculous statement
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