Ask Harvey Hernandez about his upcoming real estate project in Kissimmee, Florida, and he’ll respond with the easy charm and outsized boasts endemic to his industry. The 324-unit complex near central Florida’s Disney World, the first of a string of tourism-related developments springing up across the U.S. under the Niido brand name, will merely “change the way people live.”
“It’s the reason we get up in the morning,” says Hernandez, who once used a Tesla X as the sweetener in a deal to sell his multimillion-dollar Brickell condo.
“People will imitate it, see the value we provide, and come up with their own iterations,” he says. “And guess what? Nobody else is doing this. That makes us very, very excited.”
Boutique hotels and glitzy apartment buildings come and go. What makes Hernandez so excited is the project’s advisor, Airbnb.
Set to open this spring, Niido represents the first of what many tourism analysts believe will be a popular real estate play: buildings customized for home-sharing sites. Each one-, two-, or three-bedroom unit, ranging from 750 to 1,200 square feet, will be located within a garden-style complex featuring keyless entry, run by master hosts who will take care of maintenance and cleaning. Tenants will be able to rent, and then share, their units in a “seamless, open, convenient, and safe way” for up to 180 nights a year.
Niido is also an example of the increased professionalization of Airbnb, which makes it easier for larger landlords and property owners to prosper. There may always be a market for cheap lodging in someone’s spare room, but increasingly, Airbnb and the services that have sprung up around it are set up to favor property owners with more real estate and greater resources.
While Hernandez’s Newgard Development Group put up the capital and will own the unit—Airbnb invested nothing and has no financial stake in the project, other than the cut it may take from future rentals on its own platform—the company’s touch is unmistakable. Airbnb provided input about how to design more appealing common areas and create more desirable layouts, collaborated on branding, trained the master hosts, and provided data on where to build and what markets to enter.
