Annum Housing is thinking differently about how to solve workforce housing. They view it as a Human Resources solution and provide a platform to help employers attract and retain employees with benefits that help save on everything from home purchases and rentals to products, goods, and services that employees may need while in the home. For just under $6 per employee per month, Annum helps employers turn benefits that cost a little into big savings for employees over time.
CEO of Annum, Jerryck Murrey, has spent a lifetime researching his current role and the opportunity that Annum is chasing. He grew up in a housing sensitive environment, moving around five states and attending eight different schools…all before high school. He realized first-hand the role that housing plays in “nurture vs. nature”.
His early work career was spent in Washington DC, where he helped develop large infrastructure projects such as sports stadiums and affordable housing complexes. He saw that city and local governments took an interest in the types of projects he was working on and would provide support due to the impact they had on quality of life. After receiving his master’s degree at Georgetown in real estate development, he moved back to Oregon to work as a consultant, and was eventually recruited by Lithia & Driveway to manage their international real estate portfolio of auto dealerships and service centers.
This was the pivotal role where the idea of Annum Housing came to light in 2022. Lithia was having challenges recruiting and retaining talent, and housing was the root cause. In conversations with Lithia and developers, Murrey realized that employers were looking at housing as an HR problem, while the housing market saw it as a financing problem. Annum was created to help bridge the gap between the two views.
Annum works with employers and other third-party companies and organizations to create a housing marketplace for employees. Their technology platform allows employers to contribute a financial benefit that employees can spend on housing solutions of their choosing. For example, if a new employee is moving to town and looking for a place to relocate, they can find less expensive rents through the platform than they would find through market rate pricing. Platform benefits can also help offset the costs of home improvements or goods and services like new washing machines or gardening and grounds improvements. The employers receive data on the savings that their employees achieve for their workforce, which becomes a tool for recruitment and retention.
Annum has spent the last 12-18 months in pilot in Bozeman and Big Sky, MT and is gearing up for a summer launch in Oregon. The company selected the area in MT to pressure test its potential to scale under the most challenging economic environments, which include a small, isolated population, some of the highest real estate costs in the country, and employees living paycheck to credit card to paycheck.
Murrey is excited about the interest he continues to build with companies around the state of Oregon, across the U.S., and even internationally. “Housing is the biggest cost that we face, and it continues to “take” from us over time. Life happens, things break. If we can help reduce that cost by 10-15% it can help enrich our workforce substantially over a lifetime,” he said.
For more information on Annum Housing, visit their website.