The largest short-term rental property manager network in North America is Casago, which reached approximately 43,000 vacation homes after closing its acquisition of Vacasa on May 1, 2025. According to Skift (skift.com), by July 2026 Casago had sold all but roughly 600 of Vacasa's 32,000 units to local owners, converting many into locally led Casago franchises. Evolve is second among traditional operators with more than 30,000 properties, followed by legacy regional operators and a small set of fast-growing urban apartment-hotel brands.
Globally, the largest vacation rental manager is Awaze, a Platinum Equity portfolio company that operates more than 110,000 units across 36 countries in Europe, built from Wyndham's 2018 divestiture of its vacation rental business for 1.3 billion dollars.
The list looks meaningfully different than it did in early 2024. Vacasa lost 97 percent of its public market value before being taken private at 47.4 million dollars. Sonder peaked at roughly 17,100 total units in 2023 and filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in November 2025, with approximately 9,000 units still operating when Marriott terminated its licensing agreement. Consolidation is now the dominant force in the industry.
This ranking counts units managed by each operator under a property management or hospitality operator model, based on the most recent publicly reported figure from each company. Every number is cited inline and at the bottom. Vacasa figures come from its final 10-K for FY2024 and the Casago-Vacasa closing press release; Sonder figures from the Q3 2023 investor update, the last reliable snapshot before the portfolio-optimization drawdown.
We separate pure property managers (Vacasa, Evolve, AvantStay) from channel aggregators (RedAwning). Both "manage listings" but do fundamentally different things for the owner, and we flag the distinction in the table.
The Ranking
| # | Company | Units | Primary Geography | Archetype |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AwazeEurope's largest, from Wyndham spin-out | 110,000+ | 36 countries, Europe | European Multi-Brand |
| 2 | RedAwningAggregator / marketplace, not a traditional PM | 100,000+ | Global, US-based | Channel / Aggregator |
| 3 | Casago (incl. Vacasa)Largest North American network, franchise-led since the May 2025 merger | ~43,000 | North America, Belize, Costa Rica | Full-Service Franchise |
| 4 | EvolveTech-enabled lean model, Denver-based, profitable | 30,000+ | US and Mexico, 750+ markets | Tech-Lean Platform |
| 5 | VTripsAcquisition roll-up, Florida-based | ~7,000 | 8 states, 35+ markets | Full-Service Regional |
| 6 | OnefinestayLuxury homes, Accor-owned, Exclusive Resorts partnership | 5,000 | Global luxury destinations | Luxury Specialist |
| 7 | Belcrest Vacations (Towne Vacations)Alpine Investors platform, acquired from TowneBank April 2026 | ~3,000 | Southeast and Mid-Atlantic US | Full-Service Regional |
| 8 | AvantStayLuxury group travel focus, equity-backed | ~2,300 | 140+ US cities | Luxury Specialist |
| 9 | Grand WelcomeFranchise network, US-focused | 2,200+ | 50+ US cities, 18 states | Full-Service Franchise |
| 10 | SkyRunFranchise network, each location locally owned | 950–1,000+ | 30+ North American markets | Full-Service Franchise |
| 11 | KasaApart-hotel operator, revenue-share model | ~80 properties | Major US urban markets | Urban Apart-Hotel |
| 12 | PlacemakrApartment-hotel hybrid, Hilton partnership | Growing rapidly | US urban markets | Urban Apart-Hotel |
| – | SonderChapter 7 liquidation, November 2025 | 0 | Previously 40+ cities | Defunct |
The Five Archetypes
Every operator fits one of five archetypes. The archetype matters more than the unit count because it determines how the company makes money and what it actually does for owners.
Full-Service Property Manager
Operator takes full responsibility for pricing, cleaning, maintenance, guest communication, and owner accounting. Typically 20-35 percent of revenue. Thin margins; this is where the most consolidation has happened.
Tech-Enabled Lean Platform
Software-forward. Operator handles pricing, distribution, and messaging; owners source local cleaning and maintenance. Lower fees (~10 percent), higher scale. Evolve is the only US operator in the top five publicly known to be profitable.
Luxury Specialist
Curated high-end portfolios. Smaller unit counts (2,000-5,000), much higher nightly rates. AvantStay's reported $5B AUM on ~2,300 homes implies more than $2M per property in asset value.
Urban Apart-Hotel
Operator leases or revenue-shares entire buildings and runs them as branded hospitality products. Placemakr's 2024 Hilton partnership under the Apartment Collection by Hilton brand signals that hotel majors now see this category as strategic.
European Multi-Brand Federation
Holding company running a portfolio of distinct national brands. Dominates European vacation rentals by unit count but has minimal US presence. More hospitality conglomerate than traditional PM.
The 2024-2026 Consolidation Timeline
The story is simple: the full-service model was structurally unprofitable at the venture-funded scale Vacasa and Sonder tried to reach, and the industry has been absorbing that reality.
UK-based Houst absorbs rival Hostmaker, becoming one of Europe's largest short-term rental managers outside of Awaze. An early sign that the model was consolidating.
According to the closing announcement, Vacasa paid approximately 45 million dollars in cash and 573.8 million dollars in stock. Post-acquisition, Vacasa managed approximately 30,000 homes and became the largest North American vacation rental manager.
Vacasa combines with TPG Pace Solutions and lists on the Nasdaq under the ticker VCSA. The deal raises approximately 340 million dollars in cash, below the 485 million originally targeted. Shares open at 10 dollars and close the first day at 9.84 dollars. Vacasa has never reported an annual profit.
Sonder closes its business combination with Gores Metropoulos II on January 18, 2022, and begins trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SOND the next day. Gores Metropoulos II discloses 96 percent redemptions on the deal.
At Q3 2023, Sonder reports approximately 17,100 total portfolio units of which 11,800 are "live." Sonder announces it will exit or reduce rent on approximately 105 buildings and 4,300 units. By mid-2024 the optimization is complete; total portfolio shrinks by roughly 25 percent.
Sonder hotels are added to Marriott's Bonvoy distribution system. The deal is described internally and in the trade press as a "lifeline."
Casago offers 5.02 dollars per share for all outstanding Vacasa shares held by public stockholders. At the time of the announcement, Vacasa's self-reported home count was 38,000. A rival proposal from Davidson Kempner surfaces briefly.
The revised offer lifts the deal value to approximately 47.4 million dollars. Vacasa's board recommends it.
The combined company manages approximately 43,000 vacation homes across North America, Belize and Costa Rica. Vacasa's common stock ceases trading on the Nasdaq after 1,242 days as a public company. The transition to a franchise-led operating model begins.
Accor retains a stake but hands operational control of its luxury vacation rental brand to Exclusive Resorts, signaling that even the hotel majors are rethinking direct ownership of vacation rental operators.
Marriott cites integration delays and revenue decline from Bonvoy distribution issues. Sonder loses its distribution lifeline overnight.
Guests are told to vacate rooms with less than 24 hours of notice. Sonder's assets and liabilities are each estimated in the multi-billion-dollar range. The company has approximately 5,001 to 10,000 creditors.
According to VRM Intel (vrmintel.com), founder Steve Schwab is expected to transition out of the CEO role, with Joseph Riley, Casago's president since September 2024, expected to succeed him. Vacasa's institutional investors (Silver Lake, Riverwood Capital, Level Equity) rolled their stakes into the combined company and hold board seats.
According to TowneBank's announcement (townebank.com), the all-cash deal covers approximately 3,000 vacation rental contracts and 340 employees across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, at roughly 4.3x the segment's 58 million dollars in revenue. Belcrest Vacations is a new platform backed by Alpine Investors, the private equity firm that acquired AirDNA in 2022. A profitable 3,000-home operator selling for five times what Vacasa's public float fetched is the clearest sign yet that disciplined capital has returned to STR M&A.
According to Skift (skift.com), Casago COO John Banczak says the company has sold all but roughly 600 of Vacasa's 32,000 vacation rental units to local owners, converting many into locally led Casago franchises, most recently Casago Belize. Vacasa's decade of roughly 200 local property manager acquisitions is effectively unwound.
Deep-Dive Profiles
Short profiles on the operators that matter most for anyone benchmarking their own business.
Founded by Steve Schwab in 2001, Casago spent two decades as a regional franchise operation with roughly 5,000 properties across 72 destinations. The Vacasa acquisition was a step-change. According to the Casago press release, the combined company managed approximately 43,000 vacation homes at close.
Casago is unusual among full-service operators in running a true franchise structure: local operators license the brand and technology stack, but run their own markets. Schwab told PhocusWire this is why the deal worked where Vacasa's fully company-owned model had not: franchisees carry the ops cost and accountability, removing the structural margin problem that sunk Vacasa's public company.
By mid-2026 that thesis had been executed to its logical end. Casago COO John Banczak told Skift in July 2026 that Casago had sold all but roughly 600 of Vacasa's 32,000 units to local owners, converting many into locally led franchises. The centralized Vacasa that spent a decade acquiring roughly 200 local property managers has been unwound back into local operators, this time under the Casago flag.
Founded by Brian Egan and Adam Sherry in 2011, Evolve is the leanest operator in the top five and, per VRM Intel's profile of Egan, the only US-headquartered operator at scale publicly known to be profitable.
Evolve's structural advantage is that it does not own or manage the local cleaning and maintenance crews. Owners source their own vetted crews from a partner network, while Evolve centralizes listing distribution, dynamic pricing, guest messaging, and accounting. The ~10 percent fee (vs 25-35 percent at full-service peers) reflects this split.
Awaze was formed when Platinum Equity acquired Wyndham Worldwide's European vacation rental business for approximately $1.3 billion in 2018. The company operates a federation of national brands: cottages.com and Hoseasons in the UK, James Villa Holidays, Novasol in Denmark, and Landal GreenParks in the Netherlands.
Awaze is the clearest example of the multi-brand federation archetype: it got to the top of the global unit-count ranking by buying and operating existing brands rather than building a single consumer-facing monolith.
AvantStay is the US luxury leader by unit count. According to a December 2021 announcement, the company closed a $160M Series B led by Tarsadia Investments and 3L Capital, followed by a separate $500M propco fund led by Saluda Grade in February 2022, one of the first short-term rental propcos ever created.
The operating model combines traditional property management with group-travel product design: most homes are 4+ bedrooms, set up for families and corporate retreats, with curated interior fit-outs standardized across the portfolio. AvantStay's reported $5B AUM on ~2,300 homes works out to more than $2M per property in asset value.
VTrips is the clearest example of the roll-up model in US vacation rentals. Founder Steve Milo launched the company as Vacation Rental Pros around 2005 and grew it through acquisitions of regional operators in leisure markets (Florida, Gulf Coast, Blue Ridge, the Smokies). Per a 2023 acquired-brand announcement, VTrips reached ~7,000 rentals and ~1,000 employees. Milo stepped down as CEO in early 2025; Scott Seay, previously COO, succeeded him.
VTrips matters because its model, buying regional operators and integrating them, is what Casago is now attempting at larger scale post-Vacasa. Its track record will inform whether the Casago playbook works.
Operators in this category lease or revenue-share entire buildings and run them as branded hospitality products blending short-term, extended-stay, and hotel demand. Kasa operates ~80 properties, roughly 60 percent apartment-style and 40 percent boutique-hotel, and has raised ~$125M across three rounds.
In 2024, Hilton launched Apartment Collection by Hilton, combining ~3,000 units from Placemakr with 10,000 of Hilton's own. Placemakr announced profitability in June 2024, an unusual disclosure in this segment. The category is still small by units but bridges vacation rentals and hotels, and the Hilton partnership is a signal that the majors see it as strategic.
Postmortem: How Sonder Collapsed
Sonder filed for Chapter 7 one day after Marriott terminated the Bonvoy licensing agreement that had been described as its lifeline. The interim CEO's court filing cited "unexpected challenges in aligning our technology frameworks" and a revenue decline when Sonder bookings moved through Bonvoy.
The deeper cause was structural. Sonder signed long-term leases on hotel and apartment buildings, fit them out under its brand, and filled them with nightly guests. When demand held up, the model worked; when demand softened, the leases did not flex. The November 2023 portfolio-optimization program (exiting or reducing rent on ~105 buildings and 4,300 units) was an attempt to fix this by renegotiating obligations downward, but the company couldn't shed leases fast enough.
Same failure mode as WeWork. A long-lease, urban-density, brand-forward model looks like hospitality during growth and real estate during contraction, and it's the real estate side of the ledger that kills the company. Kasa, Placemakr, and the other apart-hotel operators have structured around revenue-share rather than long leases, which is at least part of the bet behind Hilton's Apartment Collection partnership with Placemakr.
What the Top Operators Have in Common
Three operational patterns are consistent across the top ten, and they matter more than the unit counts.
Franchise or revenue-share beats fully-owned at scale
The fully company-owned, venture-funded, growth-at-all-costs model failed. Vacasa and Sonder both tried variants; neither produced an annual profit before being acquired or liquidated. The operators growing or profitable today (Casago, Evolve, SkyRun, Grand Welcome, Placemakr, Kasa) all push operational responsibility and cost to a layer they do not fully own: franchisees, local cleaning networks, owners, or building partners. The winning playbook isn't "raise capital and acquire units," it's "design a model where unit growth doesn't require proportional ops cost growth." Casago's 2026 sell-down of Vacasa's centralized portfolio into local franchises is the pattern taken to its conclusion.
Everyone scales past 5,000 units on in-house technology
Vacasa built proprietary dynamic pricing and a smart-home stack (locks, thermostats, noise monitors via Vacasa Connect), folding in TurnKey's technology after the 2021 acquisition. Evolve built centralized infrastructure for pricing, messaging, and distribution from the start. No one scales past ~5,000 units on off-the-shelf software alone. The exception is guest-facing infrastructure: even operators running proprietary pricing and ops stacks buy that layer rather than build it, which is why guest WiFi and email-capture platforms like StayFi sit alongside in-house systems instead of getting replaced by them.
Turnover quality is the binding operational constraint
Across the top ten, turnover quality (clean, inspected, ready for the next guest) is consistently identified as the biggest variable in both guest scores and owner retention. Following the Casago acquisition, reviewers have flagged service-quality variance during franchisee handovers as a real operational risk, which is why AI turnover inspection is growing quickly among operators in the 200-unit-plus range.
What This Means for Mid-Market Operators
For operators in the 100-to-1,000-unit range, three things follow from the above. First, M&A in this segment will accelerate: Casago now has a franchise infrastructure that can absorb an independent 500-unit regional operator in a way Vacasa's company-owned model could not, and the same is true of VTrips, Grand Welcome, and SkyRun. The Belcrest-Towne Vacations deal (3,000 homes, $250 million, April 2026) shows institutional buyers are paying real multiples again for profitable operators. Second, the lean-platform model (Evolve) is underrated: most mid-market operators default to full-service because it's the legible model, but Evolve's 30,000+ profitable homes at a ~10 percent fee structure is proof that full-service is not the only scaling path. Third, the operational premium is real: AvantStay's $5B AUM on 2,300 homes is a concrete benchmark for what curation and operational excellence are worth, and the compounding effect on guest scores, ADR, repeat bookings, and owner retention over 24 months is larger than most operators budget for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the largest short-term rental property management company in the US?
As of 2026, the largest short-term rental property manager network in North America is Casago, which reached approximately 43,000 vacation homes following its May 1, 2025 acquisition of Vacasa. According to Skift, by July 2026 Casago had sold all but roughly 600 of Vacasa's 32,000 units to local owners, converting many into locally led Casago franchises. Evolve is second among traditional operators with more than 30,000 properties in the US and Mexico.
How many properties does Vacasa manage now?
Vacasa is no longer an independent company. It operates under Casago ownership after the May 1, 2025 acquisition closed. The combined Casago-Vacasa entity managed approximately 43,000 vacation homes across North America, Belize and Costa Rica at close. Vacasa's last 10-K filing, for fiscal year 2024, reported 36,500 homes managed as of December 31, 2024. According to Skift, by July 2026 Casago had sold all but roughly 600 of Vacasa's 32,000 units to local owners, many converted into locally led Casago franchises.
Who owns Vacasa?
Casago, an Arizona-based vacation rental franchise company founded in 2001 by Steve Schwab. Casago acquired Vacasa for approximately 47.4 million dollars in a merger that closed on May 1, 2025. Vacasa's common stock is no longer traded on the Nasdaq.
What happened to Sonder?
Sonder Holdings filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in November 2025 after Marriott International terminated their licensing agreement on November 9, 2025. Guests were given less than 24 hours to vacate their rooms. Sonder operated approximately 9,000 units across more than 40 cities at the time of collapse. The company had been public since January 2022 via a SPAC merger and had never reported an annual profit. The structural cause was a long-lease operating model that could not flex its cost base when demand softened.
Why did Vacasa sell to Casago so cheaply?
By the time the Casago merger was announced in December 2024, Vacasa's public market value had fallen by approximately 97 percent from its December 2021 SPAC listing. The company had reported losses every year since inception (154 million dollars in 2021, 177 million in 2022, 299 million in 2023, 154.9 million in 2024) and was operating under structural cost pressure that the public market was no longer willing to underwrite. The final enterprise value at the Casago take-private was approximately 47.4 million dollars. The underlying business, with 36,500 homes and nearly 1 billion dollars of gross booking value, remained operationally significant; the public company structure did not.
Is Evolve profitable?
According to public statements from Evolve CEO Brian Egan and reporting in VRM Intel, Evolve has been profitable and maintaining profitability was a deliberate strategic choice versus pursuing higher-growth-but-loss-making models. Evolve is the only US-headquartered vacation rental operator at scale (30,000+ homes) publicly known to be profitable.
How does this list compare to the Skift Short-Term Rental 250 or the Comparent 100?
The Skift Short-Term Rental 250 and the Comparent 100 are the industry's widely cited ranked lists of short-term rental operators, and both are useful references. This report focuses specifically on operator scale (units managed), organizes by operating archetype, and pairs each number with an inline primary source. Where our ranking differs from those lists, it is typically because we separate pure property managers from channel aggregators and marketplaces, which those lists sometimes combine.
Sources
- Casago Completes Acquisition of Vacasa — Vacasa press releasehttps://www.vacasa.com/news/casago-completes-vacasa-acquisition
- Vacasa Is Now a Casago Company After Acquisition Closes — Skift (May 1, 2025)https://skift.com/2025/05/01/vacasa-is-now-a-casago-company-after-acquisition-closes/
- Casago Sold Nearly All Vacasa's Property Manager Acquisitions and Turned Many Into Franchises — Skift (July 13, 2026)https://skift.com/2026/07/13/casago-sold-nearly-all-vacasas-property-manager-acquisitions-and-turned-many-into-franchises/
- Shakeup at Casago — Or Is It Vacasa? — VRM Intel (February 12, 2026)https://vrmintel.com/shakeup-at-casago-or-is-it-vacasa/
- TowneBank Announces Sale of Resort Property Management Segment — TowneBank press release (April 6, 2026)https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/04/06/3268420/10357/en/TowneBank-Announces-Sale-of-Resort-Property-Management-Segment.html
- Vacasa Accepts Revised Acquisition Proposal from Casago at $5.30 Per Share — BusinessWirehttps://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250317051316/en/Vacasa-Accepts-Revised-Acquisition-Proposal-from-Casago-at-$5.30-Per-Share
- Vacasa Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 — SEC filinghttps://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1874944/000187494425000003/vcsa-20241231.htm
- STR management company Casago acquires much larger — but struggling — Vacasa — PhocusWirehttps://www.phocuswire.com/str-management-casago-acquires-vacasa
- Casago's Steve Schwab on finalizing Vacasa and what lies ahead — PhocusWirehttps://www.phocuswire.com/casago-vacasa-deal-closes-steve-schwab
- Sonder Holdings Inc. To Complete Immediate Wind-Down of Operations — Sonder investor relationshttps://investors.sonder.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sonder-holdings-inc-complete-immediate-wind-down-operations
- Sonder announces bankruptcy plans; tells guests to vacate — CNBC (November 11, 2025)https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/11/sonder-to-file-for-bankruptcy-travelers-told-to-leave-hotels-next-day.html
- Sonder Officially Shuts Down: What Went Wrong? — Skifthttps://skift.com/2025/11/10/sonder-officially-shuts-down-what-went-wrong/
- Marriott, Sonder implosion detailed in court filing — Hotel Divehttps://www.hoteldive.com/news/marriott-sonder-termination-bankruptcy-court-filing/805975/
- Vacasa Finalizes Acquisition of TurnKey Vacation Rentals — Vacasa press release (April 2021)https://www.vacasa.com/news/vacasa-finalizes-acquisition-turnkey-vacation-rentals
- Vacasa Paid $619 Million for TurnKey Vacation Rentals in Mostly Stock — Skifthttps://skift.com/2021/11/30/vacasa-paid-619-million-for-turnkey-vacation-rentals-in-mostly-stock/
- Vacasa just went public. Here are five things to know — OPB (December 2021)https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/07/vacasa-ipo-price-portland-oregon-based-companies-vacation-rentals-stock-market/
- Vacation-Rental SPAC Vacasa Restructures. Shares -97% in 2.5 Years as Public Company — Wolf Streethttps://wolfstreet.com/2024/05/10/vacation-rental-spac-vacasa-restructures-shares-97-in-2-5-years-as-public-company/
- What the Largest Vacation Rental Companies in the U.S. Really Look Like in 2025 — Rental Scale-Uphttps://www.rentalscaleup.com/largest-vacation-rental-companies-us-2025/
- How Brian Egan Built Evolve Into a Profitable Short-Term Rental Business — VRM Intelhttps://vrmintel.com/how-brian-egan-built-evolve-into-a-profitable-short-term-rental-business-whats-next-for-vacation-rentals/
- Awaze, A Platinum Equity Portfolio Company — Platinum Equityhttps://www.platinumequity.com/our-company/awaze/
- Europe's $1.3B vacation rental giant gets a new name (Awaze) — The Real Dealhttps://therealdeal.com/new-york/2019/03/09/come-awaze-with-me-europes-1-3b-vacation-rental-giant-gets-a-new-name/
- Rental Company AvantStay Raises $160 Million — LA Business Journalhttps://labusinessjournal.com/real-estate/rental-company-avantstay-raises-160-million/
- Short-Term Rental Company AvantStay Raises $500 Million (propco) — LA Business Journalhttps://labusinessjournal.com/news/weekly-news/short-term-rental-company-avantstay-raises-500-million/
- VTrips Expands Portfolio To 7,000 Vacation Rentals, 1,000 Employees — Silver Sandshttps://silversandsvacationrentals.com/news/vtrips-expands-portfolio-to-7000-vacation-rentals-1000-employees
- Exclusive Resorts Takes Stake in Accor's Onefinestay — Skift (June 24, 2025)https://skift.com/2025/06/24/exclusive-resorts-takes-stake-in-accors-onefinestay-exclusive/
- Placemakr Announces a Transition to Profitability in June 2024 — PRNewswirehttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/placemakr-announces-a-transition-to-profitability-in-june-2024-302220143.html
- Hilton Launches Apt. Brand, Placemakr Partnership — Business Travel Newshttps://www.businesstravelnews.com/Lodging/Hilton-Launches-Apt-Brand-Placemakr-Partnership
- Kasa Living Raises $70M — AlleyWatch (November 2023)https://www.alleywatch.com/2023/11/kasa-living-flexible-accommodations-hospitality-brand-tech-enabled-roman-pedan/
- Steve Schwab founder profile — Casagohttps://casago.com/Steve-Schwab/
- Grand Welcome Announces it has Surpassed 750 Short-Term Vacation Rental Properties — Grand Welcomehttps://www.grandwelcome.com/blog/press_links/grand-welcome-announces-it-has-surpassed-750-short-term-vacation-rental-properties-in-the-u-s/
- SkyRun Vacation Rentals Franchising page — SkyRunhttps://skyrun.com/franchising/