Insights From The Largest Coliving Event of 2021

How Co-Liv is helping to build the global coliving community and what industry professionals have to say.

If you knew about “coliving” five years back, you were probably in the 1% who are part of the coliving industry today.

Even two years ago, coliving wasn’t mainstream: 80% of press articles mentioning coliving have been written only since 2019. LinkedIn posts with #coliving grew by 1200% during that time.

Since 2019, the industry has been maturing: an entire ecosystem of operators, developers, consultants, investors and service providers have been specialising in the coliving niche. At the same time, support organisations have enabled this ecosystem to grow more rapidly, from coliving media outlets to industry awards, global (virtual) summits and local lobbying organisations.

The growth of the coliving phenomena has taken over the real estate trends list. The movement has been in a rapid growth phase and many are trying to understand what coliving truly means.

At Co-Liv, the global association of coliving professionals, we’ve experienced that growth too. Our members increased 350% since mid-2019, our newsletter subscribers quadrupled, we hosted 100+ events in 2020 and our inner circle team went from 4 to 45 active members, who mostly form part of the executive team or are official Co-Liv Ambassadors in their current home country. There’s no doubt that coliving will continue to prosper.

It is in that context that we brought light to the coliving movement with the Co-Liv Summit, a major 2-day event that brought the entire coliving industry together at the beginning of May 2021. With 70+ speakers and 800+ total attendees, the worldwide community of coliving professionals gathered to exchange, learn and connect.

In this article, we will share key insights gathered during our event which were collected from the global Co-Liv community composed of our members, event attendees, partners, ambassadors and wider following.

5 key insights from the global coliving community

During the Co-Liv Summit, we wanted to further understand the current state and future needs of the coliving ecosystem. With the help of one of Co-Liv’s Executive Team Members, Virginia Scapinelli, we asked our event attendees some key questions that will give you a better understanding of where the coliving industry is today and what innovative opportunities still await. At Co-Liv we foresee a coliving gold rush in the coming years, and here are our 5 tips on how to address this market along the way.

Insight #1: It’s about your secret sauce

Half of the Co-Liv Summit’s participants are already active specifically in the coliving industry, while the other half come from adjacent industries and see opportunity in the emergence of coliving. The challenge ahead for both groups? Differentiation. With many coliving players already established in the industry and new entrants coming from hospitality, student housing and other real estate sub-sectors, it will be important to make your concept stand apart from the crowd. How to go about it? By leveraging your strengths and experimenting with new coliving concepts (from the most eccentric to the low-cost / low-rent typologies), as well as coming up with a unique set of services and solutions to increase operational excellence and user experience (from the most tech-enabled to the more human-centric ones).

Insight #2: Build a “coliving system”

The coliving industry is composed of a multitude of actors alongside operators and real estate professionals (e.g. developers, investors and building owners). Specialised service providers, such as technology platforms, architects, designers, planners and consultants, are now part of the conversation and have a key role in addressing coliving’s major challenges and providing integrated solutions. Integrating these services early in the process is key, and it’s clear that with such a diverse group of professionals interested in coliving, it’s going to require a massive amount of collaboration to see the industry reach its potential.

According to our polls, the coliving ecosystem has two major demands: the availability of sector knowledge in order to inform future strategic decisions (e.g. market data, industry benchmarks, trends analysis, etc.) and the need for networking opportunities as a way to detect future partners, clients and key resources. Other needs to address include providing operational problem-solving and help with product design and user experience (e.g. architecture, customer journey, community building, experience design, etc.).

Insight #4: Focus on regulations, technology and community

All topics in coliving are open for discussion and need further development, showing how the industry is still very much in a discovery phase. Technology and community facilitation are two subjects that are often on the radar, and at Co-Liv we have responded to that demand with dedicated knowledge-sharing initiatives with the Tech Community and the Community Manager Mastermind, respectively.

Meanwhile, housing policies and urban regulations remain a big challenge for coliving developments, accompanied by the search for a viable equilibrium in the relationship between affordability and profitability. Deep-dive experimentations and the resulting innovations will be crucial in these fields in the coming years.

Insight #5: Build your strategy around impact

The industry agrees that coliving is here to stay, and as of today we’re just scratching the surface. New target users could be populations such as families, single parents and seniors; as a matter of fact, experiments in these categories already exist. Adequate housing supply still remains a major unresolved issue for many cities around the globe for a large variety of social groups, and coliving has proven to be a potential solution to that issue. However, for this movement to accelerate, a real green light from government planning authorities is still outstanding and craved for from the players in the industry. By bringing housing units to the market, operators are helping individuals solve a primary need and this should be considered a social good.

Key insights from panels and talks

More than 70 speakers, panelists and experts joined us during the Co-Liv Summit to share on the latest state, health and needs of the coliving industry. Out of all the talks and panels, we gathered some key insights that stood out and summarised some key statements.

Where is coliving today?

Institutions being involved in coliving is what makes this a sector of its own right, giving it the opportunity to become a real force. Coliving is here to stay and its popularity is starting to influence adjacent industries at a high rate.
899,000 people annually are looking for roommate housing in the USA. Investment committees need to understand that coliving isn’t a fad, but rather a new way of living that younger generations are demanding. Both the real estate industry and consumers themselves are now looking at residential units as a consumer product.
The main drivers for coliving are affordability, convenience (e.g. enhanced UX), loneliness and flexibility (e.g. flexible lease terms). These demands are often referred to as the three Cs of coliving: you come for the Cost, and you stay for the Convenience and the Community.
For some municipalities, coliving is an essential tool for achieving affordable housing requirements.
“Coliving is not only a solution for young millennials, but for people at every stage of their lives. In recent years, the cities of New York, Paris and London have evolved their definition of quality housing to account for shared living and flexible leases.” - Claire Flurin, Head of R&D at Keys AM and Co-Founder of Co-Liv.
“25 million Americans live with roommates, yet this demographic is under-addressed by those who build and rent apartments” - Brad Hargreaves, CEO, Common.
“It was just shocking to me that housing, which is a fundamental need for every person in the world, is being so poorly provided for. There hasn’t been a need to innovate because space is always scarce, but if you approach it from a customer point of view, then we are scratching the surface in terms of the amount of evolution and innovation around how housing is provided.” - Reza Merchant, Chairman, The Collective.

What’s next in coliving?

“Coliving needs to adopt an evidence-based approach where its benefits to society need to be proven through data. Key indicators that can be used are: net promoter scores, percentage of residents reporting improved work and living conditions in coliving, overall housing cost burden and percentage of residents reporting improved social life and less isolation. This approach is not limited to coliving.” - Claire Flurin, Head of R&D at Keys AM and Co-Founder of Co-Liv.
“Coliving needs to set real ambitious affordability goals. At this moment in time, the overall housing cost burden in large French cities for shared living spaces (including roomating) is almost always greater than 45%, far beyond than the accepted 30% of rent burdenment.” - Claire Flurin, Head of R&D at Keys AM and Co-Founder of Co-Liv.
The future of affordable living will include shared ownership options.
Coliving has the opportunity to shift from a temporary (few months only) and obligated (cheaper and easy to book) lifestyle to an intentional way of living (long-term and life-enhancing).
Coliving is the blurring of lines between hospitality and residential. It’s not just about the bricks and mortar, it’s about a way of living.
Common operates only half of its units as coliving, while the remaining ones are operated as multifamily. Coliving is seen as a unit typology within build-to-rent. This way, coliving is an entry point into a high-quality building or residential area.

Conclusion

After a decade of experiments, trials and errors, we now (pretty much) agree on what coliving is - and this new kid on the block has passed its tipping point. A bunch of brave entrepreneurs that believed in the movement back in the early 2010s are now major industry leaders and are right in the spotlight. Their advantage: having demonstrated a functional business model and after a few bumps in the road, capital has warmed up to the idea and is starting to flow into the industry as never seen before.

However, as we’ve recently seen with major acquisitions (such as Ollie by Starcity, followed with Starcity by Common) and bankruptcies (such as Quarters in the United States and their European business acquired by Habyt), the coliving scene is still in an exploration phase, in which operators are working to gain long-term stability in their financial, legal, experience and product verticals. Overall, we saw that coliving has now secured a stable position within the real estate scene, yet is still in the early stages of professionalisation and industry consolidation.

The next decade will be about the other players that have until now been waiting and watching. Actors from adjacent segments like student housing, senior housing, build to rent, coworking and hospitality are now taking a closer look at coliving and pondering their next move. The wide array of coliving’s possible variations across the residential vs. hotel spectrum is huge and gives plenty of room for creativity and specialisation. Investors are ready, specialised service providers are flourishing and user demand is massive and growing every day.

We at Co-Liv have seen the growth of the global coliving industry and strongly believe in a big future, but the path still needs to be paved.

Written with Virginia Scapinelli, Real Estate Advisor and Executive Team Member at Co-Liv.