What To Do Now That Coliving is Mainstream
HOME recently participated in the 2021 Edition of the Co-Liv Summit to dive deep into how industry experts are approaching the future of coliving. We will be breaking down some of our favourite topics, speakers, and take-aways from this incredible virtual experience to share with you. First up is one of our most-liked topics, Coliving Becoming Mainstream, with Claire Flurin. Claire is the former Co-Liv Director and current Head of R&D at Keys AM.
When Claire and her team founded Co-Liv, coliving was still on the path to gaining the international respect and reputation that it has today. Now, coliving is recognized as being on track to reinvent the general housing market. But the question remains, how do operators and investors, residents, and city planners access a better quality of life now that coliving has gone mainstream?
The four main driving factors of coliving determined during the founding of Co-Liv are affordability, mobility, loneliness, and consumer preferences. These factors have only increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, which is why it is up to coliving developers to address and meet these evolving needs.
Due to increasing demand and rising prices, the middle class has been priced out of market-rate units but remains above traditional affordable housing. This housing affordability crisis was created under the perfect storm of conditions. In combination with the irrefutable ways our society has changed how they work and live, the desire to cure the deadly disease of loneliness and remain flexible to a growing number of renters desiring membership and access to stable accommodation rather than ownership. Coliving addresses the mismatches and inefficiencies of the housing market while aligning its value proposition with its user’s lifestyle better than any other real estate concept out there.
The coliving industry is not only designed to close the gaps between affordability, mobility, loneliness, and consumer preferences; but also to do good in real estate. Claire argues that to influence the living market and show the real estate market that coliving can do good and do business at the same time, we need to adopt an evidence-based approach. Using the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN, coliving companies around the world can monitor how they are impacting the realms of decent quality housing and work growth while decreasing inequalities and loneliness.
Coliving becoming mainstream has been secured. With great brokers such as CBRE, JLL, and Cushman & Wakefield monitoring the industry, investors getting excited about mergers on the market, and urban planners redefining quality housing, flexibility, and social connection. In fact, quality housing definitions around the world now include shared living and flexible leases in their descriptions.
Coliving is recognized as a solution for young millennials and many different people at varying stages of their lives looking for affordability, mobility, flexibility, and connection. It is up to us, the coliving industry, to demonstrate to the world the positive impact that coliving can have on the housing market and the world in general so that we can continue to facilitate a multi-faceted solution that is fit for the demand of tomorrow.
