Who we are
We were Superhosts before we were a management company.
Perch started with four homes. Ours. We each turned a property we owned into a short term rental, we each ran it ourselves, and we each earned Superhost doing it. We did not come into this business looking for a business. We came into it because we love real estate, we love hospitality, and we wanted to build something we would be proud to put our names on.
Nothing about that has changed. The standard we hold your home to is the one we set for our own.
$27M+
In guest bookings delivered for our owners
2021
The year we brought our four homes together as Perch
120+
Homes under management across Greater Seattle and Maui
17,000+
5-star guest reviews
How this started
It started in 2019, one home at a time.
Between 2019 and 2021 we each bought a property and learned this business the way you do, one guest and one problem at a time. We each earned Superhost. And we loved the work: finding the right house, the details nobody notices until they are missing, the review from a stranger who felt at home. In 2021 we put the four of us together so we could do it for other people. It is why we know what your first year is going to feel like.
Camano Island
2019 · Waterfront
Nick was first. He remodeled a waterfront cabin and brought a real estate operator’s eye to it, which is how he learned that short term rental is its own discipline and not a variation on renting. He is the one who looks at your property as an asset now, and he learned it on his own.
Capitol Hill
2020 · Seattle
Joanne converted a modern townhome in one of Seattle’s densest neighborhoods. Urban short term rental is a different business from coastal: regulation, parking, noise, turnover speed. She runs how homes get operated now, and Capitol Hill is where she found out what that takes.
Oak Harbor
2020 · Whidbey Island
Eva bought a home on a bluff facing the Pacific and ran it herself for years before Perch existed. She is the one who watches the numbers now, and it started with watching her own.
Coupeville
2021 · Whidbey Island
Cara bought an older home in Coupeville and made it modern and beautiful before it ever took a guest. She is the one who gets your home ready to go live now, and she started with her own.
The partners
Four partners. No outside investors, no private equity behind us.
Perch is owned by the four of us and run day to day by three of us. When something goes wrong on your property the escalation path is short, and it ends at a person who has run a short term rental themselves.
Joanne Pan
Co-Founder
Direction, operations, marketing
Superhost
STR owner and investor
Sets where Perch is going and owns operations end to end: how your home is run, how it is presented to the market, listing performance, and guest experience. Escalations end with her.
Eva Wu
Co-Founder
Finance, new owners, admin
Superhost
Licensed broker
Owns the numbers, from your monthly statement to whether this business is healthy enough to still be here in ten years. She is usually the first founder a prospective owner talks to about their home.
Cara Zeng
Co-Founder
Owner relationships
Superhost
Managing broker
Owns your experience as an owner. Getting your home live on time, getting it set up properly, and being accountable when something about your relationship with Perch is not right.
Nick He
Co-Founder
Real estate and strategy
Superhost
Managing broker
Founded GPS Renting, a Seattle long term rental management company. He is not in Perch’s daily operations. He works on Perch’s overall strategy and the real estate question underneath the rental one.
Real estate, not just rentals
We understand the asset, not only the booking calendar.
Most property managers can clean a house and answer a message. Far fewer can tell you whether the property itself is any good. Three of the four of us are licensed brokers, two at managing broker level. It changes what we are able to tell you.
What the home is worth, not just what it rents for
Nightly rate is one number. Comparable sales, holding cost, appreciation, and exit timing are the rest of them. We look at your property as an asset, because that is what it is.
We will tell you when short term rental is the wrong answer
Some homes earn more as a long term rental. Some should be sold. We have said both to people who came to us ready to sign, and we would rather say it in month one than have you find out in year two.
We buy in these markets ourselves
We own property in the areas we manage. When we tell you what a market is doing, we are telling you what we are betting our own capital on.
We can tell you whether the house is even a good idea
We own short term rentals here too, in the same market you are in, so your questions are questions we have asked with our own money on the line. We know where the nuances hide: what the county allows, what an HOA quietly forbids, what a set of CC&Rs actually says about short term rental before you close on a house that cannot legally be one. It is one reason a number of our owners talk to us before they buy rather than after.
Buying, or selling, is a conversation you can have here
If the next step for your portfolio is another property or an exit, you do not have to go find someone else to talk to about it.
What we stand for
We do not cut corners. That is the entire niche.
There is an easy version of this business. The cheapest cleaner. The cheapest handyman. A listing that promises more than the home delivers. A revenue projection nobody has to defend twelve months later. It works for about a year, and then the reviews turn and the owner leaves.
We built Perch the other way, for a simple reason: all four of us were putting our own homes into it. You cannot cut a corner on a property you own and not feel it. So the standard we set was the one we wanted for our own houses, and we have held every home to it since.
Our niche is that we do not cut corners. Our passion is that we do the right thing. Everything else on this page is downstream of those two sentences.
How we work
Three things we do differently.
We show you the whole year
Short term rental income is seasonal and can be severe. Peak summer months book at roughly two to three times what January through April book. We show you the whole calendar before you sign, because the most common reason owners end up disappointed is that they judged the year on the wrong months.
We know these markets in detail
120+ homes across Seattle, the Eastside, North Seattle, Whidbey and Camano, the Mt. Rainier gateway towns, and Maui. That is a live dataset on what each market pays, when it pays, and what guests expect there. It shows up in your pricing and in your reviews.
You can reach us, and we are straight with you about when
We are not a 24 hour call center and we will not pretend to be. What we are is easy to reach and quick to come back to you. Communication is our highest rated category across 17,000+ 5-star guest reviews, and owners get the same from us.
Every part of your home has exactly one name on it
We run the company on a formal operating system, which sounds like internal trivia right up until something goes wrong on your property. What it means in practice is that one person is accountable for guest operations, one for your onboarding, one for your statement, and the accountability is written down. Nothing about your home sits in the gap between two people who each thought the other had it.
Next step
Start with an honest conversation, not a pitch.
Thirty minutes with one of us. Ask the awkward questions: what goes wrong, what it really costs, what we would do if it were our house. You will get a straight answer, including if the answer is that Perch is not the right fit for your home.