Short-term-rental housing exploded in interest among real-estate investors during the pandemic. Listings on Airbnb alone jumped by a whopping 62% since 2020, according to the short-term-rental analytics firm AirDNA, a sign that more investors were rushing to meet the needs of digital nomads and everyday tourists alike.

Operating a short-term rental property is rarely as easy as buying a property and posting it online, though, especially when considering the needs of remote workers.

Jonah Hanig said he knows this after spending months working from Airbnbs around the country with his fellow cofounders of the business-intelligence-software company Explo. Their struggle to find suitable remote-work spaces sparked Hanig’s idea for Rove, which offers short-term-rental owners property-management, furnishing, and design services.

Since founding Rove in 2021, Hanig has expanded his services to eight different markets, from New York City to Scottsdale, Arizona. The latest outgrowth of the business is a marketplace exclusively for buying and selling short-term rentals, because Hanig — the company’s CEO — saw that his property-management clients were looking to expand or reduce their portfolios.

The listings get into the weeds, but necessarily so.

They include verified income statements so buyers can see how well their investment might do, and explanations of local regulations, zoning laws, and homeowner-association rules that could throw wrenches into the rental process. Some local rules hung up Hanig himself after he tried to rent a co-op apartment in the highly regulated New York City.

He’s said Rove can help investors avoid similar — costly — mistakes, especially in restricted markets.

“In Park City, Utah, there are roughly 500 properties for sale, but only approximately 100 are in areas where you can use them as short-term rentals,” Hanig told Insider. 

The marketplace will charge users a transaction fee — similar to what a broker does — with the goal of turning the buyer into a customer of Rove’s property-management business. The ultimate goal is to create “Zillow” for short-term rentals with the added feature of underwritng and valuing properties based on their potential incomes.

In some markets, the flood of new investors has resulted in oversupply, creating an “Airbnbust” for property owners counting on fast and easy bookings. However, Hanig said Rove hasn’t experience a slowdown in its markets.

“We’re in a lot of supply-constrained markets, those with not a lot of housing stock and more challenging permitting processes,” Hanig said.