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• Are you building a coliving business? Unlimited Coliving Advisory

(The following content is written by Mayank Pokharna. You can reach out to him in case you want to chat more about all things coliving)

🔁📝In our last post, we discussed the growing affordable coliving sector and Padsplit’s leadership. Revisit EC29 below, before today’s focus on housing shortage solutions:

Artof.Co Launches The Coliving Innovators Podcast

Over the last year, we have created a lot of content.

From insightful conversations with coliving founders like Brad Hargreaves, Murray Clark and Atticus LeBlanc to special coliving masterclasses with Gui Perdrix, Mayank Pokharna and Fabrice Simondi, the Art of Coliving now offers coliving entrepreneurs a solid foundation of content to help them grow their businesses.

Mayank Pokharna is now bringing it all together and more in the "Everything Coliving"
Podcast—a new series featuring active coliving founders. Subscribe to
our youtube channel where and stay tuned.

Also, we launched the Coliving Course, with coliving enthusiasts joining from around the world. Its a 12-month program that adapts to the requirements of a coliving entrepreneur and helps them build sustainable coliving businesses.

Is it a course? No, it’s not. Its a program built keeping in mind:

• Every coliving journey is different and the program adapts to it.
• Peer learning is the best form of learning, and we have weekly masterminds for exactly that
• Rome was not built in a day, and hence, we think a 12 month milestone based program is needed to help coliving entrepreneurs build sustainable coliving businesses.

Is There Truly A Housing Shortage?

We wanted to share a reflection by our friend Dr. Penny Clark from Conscious Coliving:

I read an interesting and provocative article recently arguing that despite what we are told all the time, the UK does not have a housing shortage: what it has is unequally distributed housing, with much of our housing under-occupied.

Take a look at these graphs from this blog post based on the paper ‘Fair decarbonisation of housing in the UK: A sufficiency approach’ by Ian Gough, Stefan Horn, Charlotte Rogers and Rebecca Tunstall. The first shows that 17.4% of our bedrooms are one of two or more spare rooms in a home, and 1.7% are bedrooms in empty or second homes.

In other words, a significant chunk of our housing is under-occupied,* and, according to Gough et al., ‘under-occupied bedrooms vastly outstrip the number of bedrooms that would be required to meet housing needs of overcrowded and homeless households.’

*Under-occupation: this is based on the assumption that housing needs are met if a household has one bedroom per adult or couple and each child over 9 years, while up to two younger children share a bedroom, with one spare bedroom per household regarded as normal comfort, while any additional spare bedrooms mean that a dwelling is under-occupied.

90% of under-occupied homes are held by the owner-occupied sector, with most of those households tending to be older people. While downsizing does happen in the UK, a lack of suitable homes to downsize to is a key blocker.

Coliving as homes for older people have received a lot of publicity and interest in the UK, but – despite evidence for their positive social and environmental impacts – are still extremely rare, and often not affordable.

As the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government gears up to deliver new housing (which, it should be noted, will have a big carbon cost attached) I think there is an opportunity to draw coliving and cohousing to the government’s attention as a way to meet housing need, and potentially free up larger homes where people are ready to make the move to downsize.

What To Consider Before You Invest In Coliving?

The real estate landscape is witnessing a transformative wave with the surge in popularity of coliving spaces. As investors seek to capitalise on this emerging trend, understanding the intricacies of investing in coliving is paramount.

• Target Market: Understand whether your audience is digital nomads, young professionals, or expats, and tailor amenities and services accordingly.
• Community Building: Fostering engagement through events and shared spaces creates tenant retention and satisfaction.
• Location: Choose strategic locations based on proximity to workspaces, public transport, and leisure spots.
• Amenities: Offer shared kitchens, workspaces, and recreational areas to attract tenants.
• Legal Considerations: Research planning and zoning laws to avoid obstacles.

Read more on what Matt Lesniak spoke about with Chainels as part of their thought leadership series.

Everything Else Coliving

• The coliving audience keeps evolving throughout the year for the Singaporean coliving operator, CasaMia Coliving. 47% of the members who signed up in the last 90 days are students. That's almost twice as much as their long term average. Europe still remains a major region for them where they acquire their customers. Their marketing strategies changes throughout the year basis where they are getting their customers.

• There are many examples of housing complexes within Zürich, Switzerland, and around Europe that exemplify the housing typologies that may be attractive to baby boomers and their families, such as multi-generational living, senior housing, and cooperative housing. Read about these housing models here.

If you want us to cover anything, please mail it to us on coliving@artof.co

Gui Perdrix & Mayank Pokharna
The Artof.Co team

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🆕 Up Next

🔗 EC31: Coliving Q&A, Coliving Platforms, Weekly Masterminds, Coliving Architecture, Opinions, and Other Coliving News.

🔗 EC32: Building Digital Nomad Coliving, Shared Living Survey, Lessons from Common & Selina, Coliving Events, Coliving Incubator, and Other Coliving News.