Veritas, which owns more than 200 buildings in San Francisco, will initially let tenants in five of its buildings list their apartments on Airbnb. The landlord will get 10 per cent of the short-term rental profit, and says it will put some of the money back into the building for upgrades and program oversight.

The Veritas rentals will be facilitated through Pillow Residential, a tech start-up which aims to make it easier for people to rent out their homes on Airbnb.

It offers landlords a suite of tools, which includes onboarding tenants and educating them about home sharing, creating and executing lease addendums that support home sharing, and working with building management to incorporate building rules into listing templates. Pillow Residential also gives landlords a single dashboard with information about hosting in their building, so they know what units are being rented out at any given time.

Pillow Residential's tools help tenants create Airbnb listings that automatically include information about their building's shared amenities and mobile guides for guests with everything from building access codes to emergency contact information. When guests check out, tenants can use Pillow to hire cleaners who can assist them with cleaning their listings.

"Together, Pillow and Airbnb can give landlords and tenants access to the best tools and make home sharing better and easier for everyone," said Jaja Jackson, director of global multi-family housing partnerships at Airbnb. "Veritas is a leader and innovator in the real estate community and they are one of the multi-family building owners who know Airbnb is a tremendous benefit for their properties and the residents who call their buildings home."

"We reached out to and surveyed residents, and there's a great deal of interest in this new aspect of the 'sharing economy'," said Yat-Pang Au, CEO of Veritas Investments. "This well-supported home sharing program of Airbnb and Pillow can help our residents with economic empowerment and could further differentiate our properties. Veritas strives to offer market-leading opportunities in some of the most character-rich, well-located apartments, which enhances our residents' experience. This partnership also marks one of the more significant pursuits from our newly formed Veritas Innovations business unit that advises, invests in, and incubates synergistic real estate technology partners."

Sean Conway, CEO of Pillow, said: "Demand for home sharing among renters keeps growing, and we anticipate a day when Pillow will be on every renters' checklist as a must-have, alongside amenities like air conditioning or high-speed internet. This partnership with Airbnb is a logical next step in making this vision a reality. Veritas is a trailblazer and we're proud to be a part of offering the best solutions for their residents."

Last year, Airbnb launched its Friendly Buildings Program, which, like the Veritas partnership, allows tenants of landlords who join the scheme to rent out their apartments on a short-term basis for a share of the profit. So far, landlords across the US and in Canada have enrolled more than 13,000 units in the Friendly Buildings Program.