From Silicon Valley to Barcelona: UKIO wants to modernize the real estate market

When Stanley and Jeremy Fourteau focused on Barcelona after spending half their lives entrepreneuring and traveling, they did so with a very clear mission: to empower people to immerse themselves in new destinations by offeringéthem a home wherever they wanted to live. For this, they created UKIO, a Barcelona-based startup that aims to introduce a breath of fresh air to the hermetic traditional real estate market. To do this, these French-American brothers offer avant-garde apartments to which they add a comprehensive service to the tenant and guaranteed rent to the owner.

UKIO was born with an initial capital of 2.2 million euros, which they obtained thanks to Heartcore Capital, their main investor. With revenue expectations of 100,000 euros for this July, UKIO, which was founded in 2020, offers ingeniously designed apartments, powered by technology and designed for stays of at least one month. "What we offer our client is maximum flexibility when it comes to living," says Jeremy Fourteau. Currently, UKIO's apartment offer is present in Barcelona and Madrid and, for this summer, they already plan to have a presence in Lisbon. In their ambitious, though very well thought out, expansion plan, the Fourteau brothers plan to operate more than 100 apartments in major European capitals by 2022.

Stanley Fourteau, who worked for seven years at Airbnb when the company only had 150 employees (and not more than 10,000 as now), was in charge of opening the market in Latin America, so he knows a lot about moving throughout his life. "UKIO was born when we moved to Barcelona, because after spending our whole lives changing houses, and repeating the same process over and over again, we realized that the market had not changed or evolved, much less digitized," says Fourteau. And he continues: "my wife and I arrived in Barcelona 2 and a half years ago, but it took us more than six months to feel at home. This cannot be." Tired of the same emotions, UKIO was born with the mission of empowering people to live in other cities having a home wherever they want to travel. And with a vision, that of being the first real estate brand to define who you are. "You live in a UKIO house, just as you drive a Tesla," clarifies Stanley.

His brother, Jeremy Fourteau, arrived in Barcelona from the offices of Headspace, one of the trendy meditation apps. With a very strong connection to customer service, as well as technology, together they designed the business model for their apartments: "we work hand in hand with the apartment owners, whom we really see as our partners, and what we do is rent their apartments for a duration of between 7 and 10 years. The owner has their rent guaranteed, and it is also very comfortable, because the tenant does not contact the owner for anything, but rather calls us, and we offer a comprehensive service." The Fourteau brothers rent the apartments unfurnished, transform them, and decorate them thematically "with a lot of love." The entrepreneurs add that "since the turnover is very low, the apartment owner always wins. The client also wins, because the apartments cost much less than a tourist apartment."

The brothers want to fight against the fragmentation of the market: property, owner, real estate agency, etc., a world where everyone has their own plot and worries about their own. With UKIO this changes, as they encompass the entire process and also put "all the love in the world" into it. Aware that the main expense of any person is a place to live, they try to make this asset less tedious and, moreover, inspire more confidence. "Right now our tenants are mostly Europeans and Americans. We have 12% of Spaniards who work for multinationals and the vast majority of them come from channels like Idealista," says Fourteau.

Consumer habits are evolving

"With UKIO we aim to enable a new way of living, making the moving process as simple and agile as possible. At the same time, we aim to guarantee the well-being and all the comforts of a place that makes you feel at home from the moment of your arrival. As is happening in the world, we want the real estate industry to become more dynamic and flexible'', says Jeremy Fourteau. And he continues: "also millennials buy fewer houses because fewer and fewer people are willing to allocate 40% of their income to a real estate asset. The data we handle shows that the stay per house in the main European cities is 14 months, which means that you live with your house on your back, so we need more flexible housing," they conclude.

And it is that taking as a reference their professional and personal experience, Stanley and Jeremy Fourteau, who lived for years in a context of international growth and education, founded UKIO with the aim of addressing the evolving trends of this new consumer and consequently their needs. The brothers are very clear that changes in consumer mentality and new preferences of professionals oriented to teleworking are generating new trends in the real estate industry. Exploring new job opportunities in various parts of the world that adapt to work and life expectations, with the maximum flexibility and freedom when choosing where and how to live, is today a necessity that the current, and traditional, real estate market cannot satisfy.

Design and sustainability

Design is at the core of UKIO's DNA, undoubtedly a key factor in creating the unique feeling of "feeling at home'', a concept they repeat over and over again. All apartments run on renewable energy and have been individually and uniquely designed. To do this, UKIO's design team, led by Louise Nascimento, works with local artisans to create handcrafted furniture that meets the highest sustainability standards. All apartments feature recycled wood and minimize the use of plastic, thus materializing UKIO's vision of implementing an ecological footprint as a lifestyle.

The name UKIO comes from Japan and means ''living the moment''. In accordance with Japanese standards of excellence, the Fourteaus bring the needs of the new generation to the forefront, building a digitized future to revolutionize the housing market and making the transformation of the rental experience into a fluid transition to a new home and who knows if even a new real estate business model a reality.