The fund is designed to "close the financial gap between homeowners who want to rent their properties and earn guaranteed income, and property managers who want to be paid on commission".

Rented.com estimates that more than $20 billion in rental transactions fail to occur each year due to the differing financial needs of homeowners and property managers.

"The online property rental market continues to grow rapidly, as evidenced by the success of Airbnb, VRBO and others, as well as large funding infusions, such as Vacasa's $103.5 million Series B funding round," said Rented.com's CEO Andrew McConnell. "However, until now, no company has systematically closed the gap between homeowners who want a guaranteed income stream and property managers who are rarely able or willing to offer this. The goal of Rented.com is to unlock these millions of transactions."

Rented Capital provides property owners with a guaranteed income based on proprietary data collected over several years, Rented.com's proprietary algorithm and Valuation Tool, and third-party data via partners such as AirDNA and Everbooked. Rented.com's curated service ensures property owners connect with the property managers best suited to the owners' needs, tapping into its network of more than 1,000 professional property managers across the globe. According to Statistica, in the US alone 9.26 million people state they live in households that own a second home in 2017.

For property managers, nothing about their current operations changes. They continue to manage on a commission basis. Rented.com simply exposes them to thousands of more properties than they would be able to reach on their own. In this model, Rented.com thanks to its scale and diversification is able to assume all risk, removing risk from the equation for property owners and property managers alike. Since its launch, property management firms and travel-tech companies like Vacasa have used Rented Capital to break into new markets and Oasis has used it to scale in existing markets.

"Rented.com disrupts the traditional rental industry by enabling thousands of additional property owners to consider renting and exposing property managers to thousands of properties they otherwise would lack access to," said Simon Lehmann, former CEO of Interhome and PhoCusWright. "Rented.com will encourage second home owners to rent who have not done so before, and as well as households to buy second homes where previously it was not affordable, both trends are groundbreaking."

Rented.com has also announced today that Kabbage co-founder and one of the Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women, Kathryn Petralia, has joined its board of directors and as an investor. She will help scale the Rented Capital product and platform.