When Landing transferred its headquarters from San Francisco to Birmingham in 2021, state and local officials touted it as one of the largest moves in the country that year and offered the company millions in incentives.

Landing, a national network of fully-furnished apartments, agreed to invest millions in the new headquarters in downtown Birmingham and hire 816 new full-time employees in Alabama. In exchange, the company could get no less than $2.6 million in incentives from Birmingham, Jefferson County and the state.

But now, Landing’s deal with the city is off, and the future of the company’s workforce in the John Hand building in downtown Birmingham is unclear.

A spokesperson for Landing confirmed in an emailed statement that the company didn’t accept the city’s incentives because its business model had changed.

“Initially operating out of a more centralized model (and robust HQ presence), we learned that we needed to pivot to a more distributed, field-based service model to best serve our members and property partners,” the company spokesperson said. “The outcome is a smaller, albeit essential, Birmingham-based team.”

The company works with local property managers, landlords and developers to furnish their vacant units and lease them to Landing customers who pay an annual yearly membership fee, in addition to rent. The length of leases are flexible and vary. In the Birmingham market, the average rate for a one-bedroom apartment is more than $2,000 a month, according to Landing’s online listings.

City spokesman Rick Journey told AL.com that the Office of the City Attorney sent Landing a letter terminating their incentive agreement on Nov. 14.

“No incentive funds have been provided by the city,” Journey said.

The Landing’s spokesperson declined to say how many people the company employs locally now. Back in 2021, Landing had about 50 local employees and the office downtown.

Landing could have received more than $1.6 million dollars through the company’s agreement with Birmingham, which was finalized in July 2021.

But less than three years later, Landing officials say the company canceled its deal with the city, without the company accepting a single dollar of the more than $1.6 million of incentives it could have applied for from Birmingham.

Jefferson County paid Landing just $29,000, said Jeff Traywick, the county’s economic development advisor. The county paid those incentives in April 2022 after the company reported hiring 10 new employees, Traywick said.

“The incentives are in place until 2027,” he said. “Our understanding is that they will ask to terminate the agreement, but we don’t have that yet.”

If Landing terminates the agreement, it will have to pay back the incentives to the county, per the agreement.

Per the agreement, the county could pay Landing up to $1 million. The agreement said the county could give the company between $2,000 and $4,000 per new employee, depending on salaries.

Through Landing’s agreement with Alabama, the state’s workforce agency has paid Landing $313,100, through checks paid in July, August and October of 2022, per the state comptroller’s website. That agreement started in December 2020, and fleshes out a timeline for Landing to meet its capital investment goal by the end of 2025 and its jobs target by the end of 2026.

Alabama Department of Commerce spokeswoman Stefania Jones confirmed that the state’s agreement with Landing is still active, but declined to answer questions.

Landing said that the company is still committed to its Birmingham HQ.

“We remain committed to growing our business in Alabama and supporting the local business community, anchored by our headquarters in Birmingham,” the company spokesperson said.

Landing’s chief executive Bill Smith – who also founded another tech company based in Birmingham, Shipt – created Landing in 2019 with $15 million of his own money. He officially launched Landing in November that year, opening its first headquarters in San Francisco, and offered apartments there as well as an initial five other markets: Birmingham, Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles and New York City.

The private company has been quiet about its finances since fall 2021, when it reported a new round of fundraising, bringing its total to roughly $320 million in loans and equity from investors. The company’s website now lists $347 million in total funding.

But the company suffered at least three rounds of layoffs starting in October 2022 and as recently as November 2023, the day after its deal with Birmingham was officially called off. At the time, several employees told Business Insider that they had to train their would-be replacements, who were working from Mexico City, before they were laid off.

Trevor Sutton, who works on the Birmingham Business Alliance’s economic development team, pointed out that tech industry layoffs for companies like Landing can have a bigger impact in smaller communities like Birmingham.

“What we are seeing is that in regions or cities where there is a much larger tech presence, is that the layoffs are normalized in a way,” Sutton said. “Market changes, product changes, where they can affect another industry a lot more slowly impacts tech very quickly, and so business operations have to change to meet changing demands or needs.”

But he’s optimistic, he said, that the Birmingham metro’s growth has created the growing tech infrastructure to help absorb laid off employees, including from Landing. The metro has seen a tech boom in the last decade, leading up to the city receiving designation as tech hub last fall so that it can apply for federal funding.

Shipt’s branding and reputation also helped attract more talent to Birmingham, including for Landing, Sutton said.

It’s unclear where things stand for the company’s hiring plans now. The company says on its website that it currently has 450 total employees, including workers who are assigned to apartment properties in markets across the country, beyond just the company’s corporate employees in Birmingham.

As of April 8, Landing has 14 job openings posted to its website. Five roles are advertised for Birmingham: vice president of finance, revenue manager, financial analyst, senior staff accountant and membership sales specialist. Four jobs are available for Landing’s office in Mexico City.

Sutton said he doesn’t know how Landing is doing financially. But he noted that Alabama’s incentive agreements rely on performance, rarely provide cash up front and often have claw backs.

“That’s a great way to incentivize businesses to come here without putting a lot of the community’s capital at risk,” he said. “As businesses change, drive their growth plan, their hiring plans often change with that. You can’t always predict that when you’re growing like crazy.”

It’s unclear how much the company has invested into its HQ in downtown Birmingham. Per its agreement with the state, Landing was expected to invest more than $13 million.

Officials for the city, the county and the state declined to answer questions about the company’s economic impact.

The original agreement with the state required Landing to meet yearly targets to hire a total of 816 full-time employees earning an average hourly wage of $34.27, and to invest in its HQ yearly, the same as the Birmingham agreement. Under the deal, the company’s top three executives and at least 75% of all employees would have to live in Alabama most of the time.

In exchange, Landing could apply for jobs credits from the state — which, in the most recent version of the agreement, is 4% of wages paid to employees annually, up to 120% of the hiring goal — starting when the company meets the minimum jobs threshold.

That would have required Landing to start applying for jobs credits when it hired five new employees. But in May 2022, Landing amended its agreement with the state, asking to increase that threshold to 50 employees before it had to start applying for jobs credits each year. The company also asked for more cash, and for the state to cut back the minimum wage requirement to $30 an hour, on average. The state agreed.

But, if Landing doesn’t hire enough employees or pay them the required wages, the company will have to forfeit its incentive for that year. And if Landing fails to meet at least 40% of the jobs target, the company then forfeits its right to receive any more incentives from the state in the future, per the agreement.

If that happens, the company enters the “maintenance period” of its agreement with the state, during which Alabama can take back its money for any year that the company failed to keep its end of the deal, per the agreement. If the state ends up terminating its agreement with Landing, the company has to pay the state back.