Case study
Harrington Housing: 3,200+ beds across 16 cities, run as one system
3,200+ beds. 16+ cities. 100+ education agents. The scale demanded technology that did not exist. So we built it.
At a glance
3,200+
Beds
16+
Cities across Canada, the US and internationally
100+
Education consultancy agencies
$280,000+
Annualised revenue from pricing optimisation
About Harrington Housing
Canada / USA
Harrington Housing is one of North America’s largest student coliving operators. Founded in Canada, they provide fully furnished shared housing for students, interns and young professionals across 16+ cities in Canada, the United States and internationally.
With 3,200+ beds and partnerships with 100+ education consultancy agencies, 15 ESL schools and 9 universities, Harrington operates at a scale where technology is not optional. It is the difference between a functioning business and chaos.
Continental-scale operations with startup-era tools
Harrington’s growth story is impressive. From a single property in Toronto to 3,200+ beds across three countries in a few years. But the tools did not grow with the business.
Imagine this scenario. It is January. The spring semester is about to start. 100+ education agents worldwide are simultaneously emailing Harrington asking: “Do you have availability in Toronto for February?” “What is the price for a shared room in Vancouver?” “My student needs a room near UBC, can you help?” Each email requires a staff member to check availability (in a spreadsheet), check pricing (in another spreadsheet), and respond. By the time the response goes out, 6-24 hours later, the student has often booked elsewhere. The agent moves on. The booking is lost.
Now multiply that across 100+ agents, 16+ cities, and two peak booking seasons per year. The inbox is unmanageable. The spreadsheet is unreliable. The opportunity cost is enormous.
Multi-channel lead chaos
Bookings came from the website, 100+ education agents, 9 university partnerships, marketplace platforms including Student.com, Coliving.com and HousingAnywhere, direct inquiries and referrals. No unified pipeline. Leads tracked in spreadsheets, email threads and WhatsApp groups. 8-12 duplicate bookings per month, where two agents booked the same room for different students. No attribution. No way to know which channel was actually driving revenue.
Agent management consuming two FTEs
Two full-time staff members did nothing but handle agent communications: checking availability, quoting prices, confirming bookings, tracking commissions and processing payouts. All by email. All manually.
Seasonal pricing left money on the table
September and January are 95%+ occupancy. Summer drops to 60-65%. Without dynamic pricing, Harrington charged the same rate year-round. They were underpriced during peak season, leaving revenue on the table, and overpriced during off-peak, losing bookings to cheaper competitors.
International payment failures
Students from 50+ countries paying in different currencies. Approximately 8% of international payments failed due to currency conversion issues, incorrect SWIFT details or bank processing delays. Each failed payment required 30-45 minutes of manual troubleshooting.
Cross-city transfers were admin nightmares
A student doing their spring semester in Toronto and summer internship in Vancouver needed a new lease, a deposit transfer, a room assignment, WhatsApp group changes and key coordination. Each transfer took 2-3 hours of admin work. During peak transfer season, this consumed entire days.
What JumboTiger built
Lead-to-lease-to-operations platform
A complete system that unified every booking channel, every city and every operational workflow into one platform.
Unified lead pipeline: every booking source, whether from an agent, a university portal, the website or a marketplace, flows into one pipeline with automatic source attribution. No more spreadsheets. No more guessing which channel works. The data is clean.
Real-time availability engine: the moment a room is booked, the availability updates everywhere, on the website, in the agent portal, across all connected channels. No more double bookings. The 8-12 monthly duplicate incidents dropped to zero.
Room assignment optimisation: the system matches students to rooms based on gender preference, university proximity, floor preference, shared versus private, and dietary or lifestyle preferences. What used to take 30 minutes of manual matching per student now happens automatically.
Multi-jurisdiction leases: Harrington operates in Canada and the US, and lease requirements differ by province and state. The system generates the correct lease template based on the property location, auto-populating tenant details, pricing and jurisdiction-specific clauses.
Multi-currency billing: tenants can pay in CAD, USD, EUR, GBP and 20+ currencies. The system handles conversion, reconciliation and automated invoicing. International payment failures dropped from 8% to under 1.5%.
Cross-city transfer workflow: one-click initiation. The system automatically generates a new lease for the destination city, transfers the deposit, assigns a room, updates access codes and notifies the local team. A process that took 2-3 hours now takes 15 minutes.
Agent and university partner portal
This single feature saved Harrington the equivalent of two full-time employees.
Real-time availability and pricing: all 100+ agents can log into the portal and see, in real time, which rooms are available in which cities at which prices. No more emailing to ask. No more waiting for a response. The information is there 24/7.
Self-serve booking: agents can book directly on behalf of their students without contacting Harrington staff. They select the room, enter the student’s details, and submit. Harrington receives the booking. The student receives a confirmation. The agent’s commission is automatically calculated.
Commission dashboard: every agent can see their total bookings, earned commissions and payout status in real time. No more monthly reconciliation conversations. No more disputed commission amounts.
University portal: branded pages for each of Harrington’s 9 university partners. Housing office staff can check availability and direct students to the portal. Marketing materials, including photos, descriptions and pricing, are available for download.
Agent performance analytics: Harrington can see which agents generate the most bookings, the highest-value bookings and the best conversion rates. This data informs which agent relationships to invest in and which to renegotiate.
Revenue management and reporting
Dynamic pricing recommendations based on seasonal demand, historical occupancy and market comparables
City-level and portfolio-level P&L reporting in real time
Seasonal demand forecasting based on academic calendars and historical booking patterns
The pricing optimisation alone generated $280,000+ in annualised revenue that was previously left on the table
The results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
Agent booking response time | 6-24 hours | Instant (self-serve) |
Lead-to-booking conversion | 12% | 23% |
Duplicate bookings per month | 8-12 | Zero |
Cross-city transfer time | 2-3 hours | 15 minutes |
Summer occupancy | 60-65% | 74% |
International payment failures | ~8% | Under 1.5% |
Staff hours on agent management (weekly) | 80+ hours (2 FTEs) | Under 40 hours |
Revenue from pricing optimisation (annualised) | N/A | $280,000+ |
Monthly reporting time | 2-3 days | Real-time dashboard |
Total annualised impact: $280,000+ from pricing optimisation. 2,000+ staff hours saved, the equivalent of 1+ FTE. Zero duplicate bookings. Summer occupancy up 9 points. Agent partners booking 3x faster.
The takeaway
At Harrington’s scale, every operational inefficiency multiplies across 3,200 beds and 16 cities. A 15-minute saving per booking multiplied by thousands of bookings per year adds up to thousands of staff hours. A 9-point improvement in summer occupancy across 3,200 beds is hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the agent portal, which replaced two full-time email-based roles, pays for itself every quarter. This is what purpose-built technology does at scale. It does not just save time. It transforms the economics of the business.
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