Business View Magazine May 2023

37 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 5 AVENUEWEST are doing similar things to us now, so I think it’s catching on, especially with the shortage of inventory Brit talked about, and we’ve had to go out and look for alternative opportunities to find that inventory. But our corporate clients have been asking for it. I don’t want to put an executive and their family, with their two dogs, in a 3-bedroom apartment that’s 1600 square feet. If they’re used to coming home to a much larger space, our goal is to find them a similar product in their new location.” Being a network of real estate brokerages is what gives AvenueWest its competitive edge when it comes to securing that huge, flexible inventory of precisely these kinds of ‘unicorn’ properties. With offices across the country currently servicing around 150 cities nationwide (and partners that help them accommodate and fill in the rest of the footprint), the firm officially has boots on the ground in every major market. “It’s so that we can be on top of things like inventory, and the trends in the local areas,” Healy says. “Each one of our offices is a brokerage, so they’re licensed in that state, and some of us are cross-licensed in multiple states. It’s one of those pieces that makes us unique and also lets us do the destination services for our relocating customers. If they need tours of the city to get acclimated, try to figure out the school districts, to purchase a property after the corporate housing lease, we can walk them through it all.” Each of AvenueWest’s properties is individually owned by an investor, with several of them coming from ‘fix and flip’ situations in which the buyer is stuck holding inventory they can’t sell at the current rates due to the potential for lost profits. “We’ve stepped in and we’re renting those properties to help bridge the gap between when the market might pick back up, paying for some of the carrying costs to where they can get a better sale price,” Healy explains. “From a housing shortage perspective, what we’re finding is that people have their primary residence, with a really excellent mortgage at a 3% interest