Sonder Corp.


Sonder Corp. is an apartment-hotel company that manages short-term rentals in North America and Europe. It was founded in Montreal, Canada, and since 2016 has been based in San Francisco, California, in the United States.

History and services

Sonder managed 5,000 apartments in the United States as of March 2020. As of 2019, Sonder was the largest professional host on the lodging website Airbnb. Sonder has also been described as a competitor to Airbnb. Its competitors in the short-term rental market include Domio Inc., Lyric Hospitality and The Guild.
In addition to managing apartments in existing buildings, Sonder constructs its own housing. As of January 2020, Sonder had apartment construction projects planned in Dallas, Denver, Miami, New York City and Philadelphia.
The company had raised $400 million in capital funding as of 2019 and claimed its worth at $1 billion.
In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sonder laid off 400 employees, one-third of its staff.

Controversy

The city of Boston fined Sonder $11,700 in December 2019 under a new law banning absentee landlords from short-term rentals. Sonder, which accounted for 39 of the 288 fines in the city, said it would appeal.
In 2019, the Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association filed a complaint against property-developer Sherman Associates, which had intended to implement 94 Sonder units in downtown Minneapolis. The project was ultimately reduced to 25 units.