The First Curated Resident Operating System
FOUNDER STORY
Built by
a resident.
Kiara Hawkins, Founder & CEO
I didn't discover this problem from the outside looking in.
I live it.
More than 38 million people in America call an apartment home...including me!
And for something we simply call “renting,” an incredible amount of life happens here.
It's where someone gets the keys to their first place after college. Where couples move in together. Where babies come home. Where people work remotely, recover from surgery, start businesses, lose jobs, find new ones, retire, downsize, celebrate milestones, and begin again.
An apartment may be a unit on paper. To the person living there, it's home.
Yet somewhere along the way, the technology surrounding apartment living became much better at helping properties operate than helping residents actually live.
Property management has made incredible technological progress and that progress matters. But ironically, many of those improvements resulted in residents constantly toggling between multiple platforms just to manage their home.
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One platform for rent.
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Possibly another for maintenance.
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Another for parking.
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Another for packages.
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Another for smart-home technology.
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Another for amenities or community services.
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Another for perks and rewards...
Are residents enjoying anything? Or are they just managing logistics.
I kept wondering:
Why does it have to work this way?
I didn't believe the answer was another platform competing to replace everything that already existed.
I believed the experience itself needed a home.
That idea became VIP Living.
— Kiara HawkinsFounder & CEO, VIP Living
The Experience Matters.
VIP Living is being built around a simple belief:
Technology should support the living experience, not complicate it.
Residents shouldn't have to understand the technology stack behind their property. They shouldn't have to care which vendor changed, which system management prefers, or which company handles a particular service.
Those things can change.
Their experience shouldn't have to.
That's why we're building VIP Living as a resident-first integration platform: one familiar experience designed to connect the technology and services already surrounding apartment life.
We're not trying to own every service a resident uses.
We're building the experience of using them together.
Luxury is
Personal.
Luxury is
VIP.
"It isn't just marble countertops, stainless-steel appliances, covered parking, or a beautiful pool.
Luxury is a home that complements your lifestyle.
And I don't believe that philosophy should belong exclusively to luxury apartments.
Whether someone lives in conventional multifamily, student housing, affordable housing, or a senior community, technology should make living there feel more convenient, connected, consistent—and human.
Apartment living shouldn't feel like a collection of transactions.
It should feel like home.
That's the future I'm building VIP Living toward.
Not more technology for the sake of technology.
Not another platform residents have to manage.
But a better experience of the technology already surrounding their lives—and an ecosystem capable of growing with what residential living becomes next.
We have a long way to go.
But I believe the opportunity is enormous.
And sometimes the biggest shifts begin with someone experiencing an everyday problem long enough to finally ask:
Why are we still doing it this way?"
— Kiara HawkinsFounder & CEO, VIP Living
