Airbnb-Backed Rental Manager Lyric Restructures to Focus Just on Key Cities

Lyric, the Airbnb-backed rental manager of multifamily apartments, hit the pause button on its growth strategy, cut its staff, and will focus on its best-performing markets.

The Real Deal reported  that San Francisco-based Lyric, which managed some 600 units in more than a dozen cities around the United States, laid off some 25 of 120 employees early last month.

In a statement to Skift, Lyric said: “We’re continually evaluating how to best position Lyric to scale in a thoughtful fashion, all while adapting to a rapidly changing real estate, hospitality and capital landscape.”

The company added: “Lyric has evolved a lot since we started out 5 years ago, and our focus has shifted to growing what we believe is the future of this category — larger projects and increased density in some of our best performing cities. That means not only restructuring our operations but the teams that support each function, all with aim of creating a sustainable growth model and even better guest experience.”

Founder and CEO Andrew Kitchell declined to elaborate.

Airbnb led a $160 million Series B funding round of Lyric a little less than a year ago. At the time Skift questioned whether Lyric could be both a marketplace and distributor simultaneously.