Rent-to-own furniture is being rebranded for millennials

When I moved into my current apartment last summer, I had to figure out how to rearrange my furniture — mostly things I had bought off Craigslist or inherited from friends — to fit a completely new space. I had to toss a bunch of stuff that was either damaged beyond repair or just not going to fit in my bigger, weirdly shaped living room: a futon, some end tables, a shelf. I also had to buy new versions of the things I got rid of, something I still haven’t done because I’m hesitant to spend hundreds of dollars furnishing an apartment I might only live in for a year or two.

I’ve been in New York City for seven years and have lived in just as many apartments. I’m in my 20s, have some disposable income — though not enough to, say, buy a house — and am intimidated by the cost of furnishing a home. I am, in other words, the ideal customer for a crop of new startups that are trying to convince people to rent their furniture instead of buying it.

Two such companies, Fernish and Feather, both promote themselves as flexible, affordable alternatives to furniture ownership. Both let customers pay to rent pricey furniture in monthly installments and give them the option to buy whatever they rented once the lease is up. The prices vary depending on the brand of the item and how long the lease lasts.

An $899 West Elm couch rented through Feather, for example, starts at $52 a month — but if the customer were to rent it for two months instead of 12, they’d be paying $201 a month instead. And if I were to pay $52 a month to rent that $899 West Elm couch for a year before deciding I wanted to buy it, I’d only have to pay Feather the difference, or $275. Fernish uses a similar payment structure, with monthly payments decreasing as the lease term increases.

For now, the services are only available to customers in select cities: Fernish rents in Los Angeles and Seattle, while Feather is available in New York City, the Bay Area, and certain parts of New Jersey. More established companies have also gotten into the housewares rental game. Earlier this year, Rent the Runway and West Elm announced a partnership, though as of now they only rent linens and pillows. And in February, Ikea announced it would also offer furniture rentals, though it’s unclear how Ikea-quality furniture will last long enough to move from apartment to apartment.

Rent-to-own furniture is not a new concept. Rent-A-Center, one of the most famous rent-to-own companies, has been around since 1973, though its ideal consumer is different than that of Fernish or Feather. In a 2014 statement to NerdWallet, a Rent-A-Center spokesperson claimed the company “believe[s] in empowering those striving to enjoy the American dream, individuals and families that have damaged, limited, or no credit, to get the big ticket items they need, when they want, and with the payment plans specifically designed to meet their budget requirements.”

While Rent-A-Center stores are mostly located in low-income neighborhood and military bases, both Fernish and Feather exclusively deliver to some of the most expensive cities in the country. And while Rent-A-Center makes its money by marking up the monthly cost of the goods it offers — NerdWallet found that a $148 subwoofer would cost a customer $779 if they bought it through a one-year rent-to-own contract from Rent-A-Center — both Feather and Fernish appear to charge customers the retail cost of the goods they lease and sell.

The point of startups like Fernish and Feather isn’t to make West Elm and Crate & Barrel furniture more affordable; it’s to give young people in big cities, many of whom find themselves moving every year, temporary access to nice furniture they can’t necessarily lug from apartment to apartment. Feather’s FAQ emphasizes its commitment to “furniture flexibility.” Fernish claims to “create a flexible and inspired home experience for an increasingly mobile society.” Both companies want to “unburden” people from the annoying parts of buying furniture, like moving it from place to place or having to deal with unhelpful customer service lines.

Both companies’ emphasis on “flexibility” helps obscure an ugly truth: Homeownership is out of the picture for many millennials, making renting a necessity rather than a choice. More than one-third of American heads of household rented their home in 2016, the highest rate since 1965, according to a 2017 report by Pew. The same report found that 65 percent of households headed by people under 35 were rentals. Race and generational wealth play a part in this as well: black and Latino households were twice as likely as white households to rent their homes, according to the report.

As Chavie Lieber has previously written for The Goods, these new rental services suggest a future where we rent almost everything and own very little. To some, the rise of rental services may suggest that millennials are more economically precarious than their predecessors — after all, moving every year or two and barely owning anything is hardly a sign of stability — and that their generational precarity is a sign of larger economic forces.

Companies like Fernish and Feather are leaning into this instability and rebranding it as an opportunity. “We don’t own our apartments,” Feather’s FAQ reads. “We don’t own our cars. We don’t even own movies anymore. So why own your furniture?”

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