SWEET HOMES, ALABAMA
BILL SMITH STEERS HIS MIDNIGHT SILVER TESLA X THROUGH THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, AND PULLS INTO A LOW-RISE APARTMENT COMPLEX. “This used to be a brothel 100 years ago,” he says with a smile. Today, it’s a modern, renovated building, one of dozens in this old industrial city where his company, Landing, rents fully furnished flexible-lease apartments. A thin man with intense blue eyes, Smith, 36, steps into a sunny one-bedroom with a railroad layout. It goes for $1,800 a month, a 20% premium to what it would rent for empty. It’s decorated with innocuous furniture, inoffensive linens, even taupe dishware, all designed and manufactured by his team. “Someone wants to move into an apartment in five days, we have to be able to acquire it and make it beautiful in…