EC18: Coliving Unbundled Event, Coliving Impacting Serviced Apartments

Coliving isn't just about sharing spaces; it's about creating connections that inspire and empower each individual to thrive.

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Impact of Coliving on Serviced Apartments

Sean Wewer, Homelike, writes that coliving has transformed the housing landscape by providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional housing, particularly appealing to young professionals and students.

With living costs soaring, especially in urban areas, coliving offers affordability through shared expenses for utilities, rent, and more. On average, coliving units are 47% cheaper than studios and 65% less expensive than entire apartments, despite being smaller in size.

Increased Length of Stay

This price advantage is complemented by extensive communal facilities that enhance the living experience and encourage longer stays, averaging 4.5 months. This trend challenges traditional serviced apartments to adapt by integrating communal spaces and leveraging technology to remain competitive.

Despite the reduced personal space, extensive communal facilities such as coworking areas and social lounges enrich the resident experience, promoting longer average stays compared to other housing options. As coliving continues to grow, traditional housing providers, like serviced apartment operators, are adapting by incorporating shared spaces and digital tools to stay competitive in this evolving market. This trend not only highlights the economic benefits of coliving but also its role in fostering community and connection among residents.

Read more here.

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Coliving Incubator Demo Day Report

The report showcases the insights and achievements of our first cohort, whose diverse projects tackle challenges from affordability to community connectivity in rural and urban living spaces.

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"The Travelling Village": A Global Experiment in Family Coliving

"The Travelling Village," an inspiring initiative that brings together 19 digital nomad families on a four-month journey across Asia. Spearheaded by Danish entrepreneurs Nikolaj Astrup and Michelle Rødgaard-Jessen, this project explores the potential of a roaming lifestyle for families.

After experiencing the challenges of maintaining social connections on the road with their children, Astrup and Rødgaard-Jessen launched this unique experiment to foster a supportive community for working parents. The families, spanning a diverse range of backgrounds, share accommodations, childcare, and workspaces across Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan, turning travel into an enriching part of their children’s education.

Read on how "The Travelling Village" blends communal living with the flexibility of digital nomadism, creating a vibrant social life through organized activities and cultural immersions. Discover how this experiment not only challenges traditional family dynamics but also redefines what it means to be part of a global village.

Read more about “The Travelling Village”

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Everything Else Coliving

• Two new property management software for coliving are now in the market Check out Powerhouse and Chainels
• Read Brad Brad Hargreaves’ Thesis Driven newsletter on “Why Yardi Bought WeWork"?”
• Demand for coliving spaces on the rise in India.
• Read what Karla Fraser has to stay about “Co-Living: A Growing Trend for Expats, Digital Nomads, and Retirees”
• Read the opinion of Assembly Place CEO, Eugene Lim: Is co-living a fad or here to stay in Singapore?
• Coliving apartment tower in Houston’s Museum District, restarts development after being put on hold last fall.
• LHN launches its largest co-living residence in Orchard under the Coliwoo brand.
• CLI formally opened its first coliving project along Banilad in Cebu City
• Listen to the podcast “Daily Cuts” on Could coliving become the future of housing?
• A new trend is sweeping through the luxury real estate market that is not only appealing to, and fueling Diaspora interest and investment, but also reshaping the market and the landscape of urban living. This trend, which involves combining the convenience of shared amenities with the exclusivity of upscale accommodations in innovative residential offerings, is gaining popularity worldwide. Read More.

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If you want us to cover anything, please mail it to us mayank@everythingcoliving.com

Why coliving is taking share from serviced apartments

The Homelike data point about coliving being 47% cheaper than studios masks a deeper structural shift in the extended-stay accommodation market. Serviced apartment operators (Adagio, Frasers, Citadines, Synergy) have been losing share to coliving for three reasons that compound:

1. Tenant economics. The all-inclusive coliving rent saves 25-40% versus equivalent serviced apartment + groceries + utilities + cleaning + community access. For mid-stay (1-6 month) tenants, the serviced apartment core market, this math is overwhelming.
2. Demand-side preferences. Modern professional travelers, particularly remote workers, prioritize community + flexibility over hotel-style anonymity. Serviced apartments are operationally optimized for the latter; coliving for the former.
3. Operator economics. Coliving at stabilized occupancy delivers 22-32% NOI margins versus serviced apartment's 15-22%. Capital flows toward the higher-margin product, which compounds supply formation.

The serviced apartment response, adding "social spaces" and "community programming" to existing properties, is structurally limited. Retrofit coliving doesn't deliver the integrated experience purpose-built coliving does, and at the prices serviced apartments need to charge for their conventional formats, the value proposition still trails.

Coliving incubator demo day: the pattern across cohort projects

Looking across the EC Coliving Incubator first cohort, three patterns stand out:

Pattern 1: Affordability-driven hybridization. Multiple projects targeted the affordability-coliving intersection, workforce housing, student-adjacent product, intergenerational housing. The common thread: applying coliving's operational efficiency to demographics traditionally served by less amenitized housing types. The economics work because coliving's premium amenities (community manager, smart access, programming) cost less per-bed than they look when amortized over higher bed density.

The challenge for affordability-driven coliving: it requires real subsidy structures or alternative financing (LIHTC in the US, social-housing funds in Europe) to clear hurdle rates. Pure market-rate affordability coliving doesn't quite work at most current cost structures.

Pattern 2: Rural/destination community-anchored products. Several projects focused on rural coliving anchored in specific geographic communities, village restoration, agrarian-adjacent retreats, remote-area workforce. The economic model: lower capex per bed, smaller bed counts per property, longer ALOS, modest RevPAB. Returns rely on operational stability and brand pull rather than asset appreciation.

Pattern 3: Specialty community products. Coliving for specific demographic communities, single mothers (per the EC36 Coliving Innovators interview), retired professionals, neurodivergent residents. These segments have distinct unmet needs that mainstream coliving doesn't address. Returns come from premium pricing supported by community fit rather than location or amenity.

The Travelling Village experiment: what it actually proves

"The Travelling Village", 19 nomad families touring across Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, is more than a lifestyle anecdote. It's a real-world test of three hypotheses that matter for the family-coliving sub-segment:

1. Demand exists for structured family nomadism. Within the broader digital-nomad demographic, families with school-age children represent perhaps 8-15% but they have specific needs (educational continuity, peer-network for children, age-appropriate space) that solo-nomad-focused coliving doesn't serve.
2. Operational model can be cyclical-itinerant. Properties booked for 4-12 weeks at a time with the same cohort moving together changes the economics from per-property to per-cohort. Operating costs concentrate around cohort transitions; revenue concentrates per-cohort.
3. Educational integration is the constraint. Children's education across a multi-country itinerary is the largest operational complexity. Solutions range from accompanied homeschooling networks to partnerships with international online schools (Galileo XP, Crimson Global Academy).

The Travelling Village's results will be a real data point for any operator considering family-cohort coliving. Watch for: cohort retention beyond first 6 months, second-tour signup rates, educational outcomes vs traditional schooling. Early signs suggest the unmet need is real but the operational model needs refinement.

PMS market consolidation: Powerhouse and Chainels

Two new PMS launches signal continued maturation of the coliving software stack. Powerhouse positions for the mid-market operator (4-30 properties) with emphasis on automation; Chainels emphasizes the resident-experience layer (community app, comms, services marketplace).

The broader market dynamic: incumbents (Hostfully, Coliving.com PMS, Hostaway) are increasingly squeezed between consumer-grade tools at the low end (Lodgify, Airbnb Host Tools) and enterprise platforms at the high end (Guesty, Cloudbeds, Mews). The mid-market is where Powerhouse and Chainels are targeting, and that's also where most operators are uncertain about their PMS investment. For an operator at 5-20 properties, the rational play is testing 2-3 platforms in parallel for 60 days before committing.

India coliving: the demand structurally outpaces supply

The Karla Fraser article on Indian coliving, expats, digital nomads, retirees, slightly understates the actual demand structure. Indian coliving in 2026 is overwhelmingly student-and-young-professional driven, with foreign-tenant demand a smaller but growing share. Stanza Living's 75,000-bed scale and Colive's 25,000+ aren't built on expat demand; they're built on internal-migration demand (Indian tier-2 graduates moving to tier-1 tech corridors).

What's changing: foreign-tenant demand is growing fast as India's tech sector attracts more international talent (NRI returnees, foreign IT contractors, GCC expansion). Operators positioning for both segments, premium Indian-young-professional + foreign-tenant, capture meaningful ARPU uplift. The challenge: the products required are different (food, room density, community model), and most operators don't run both well.

Singapore: fad or here to stay

The Eugene Lim (Assembly Place) take on Singaporean coliving deserves seriousness. Singapore's regulatory environment uniquely constrains coliving: the URA's 90-day minimum stay rule blocks the nomad/short-stay model; HDB restrictions limit shared housing in public housing stock; private-property prices make capex per bed structurally high.

What works in Singapore: corporate-relocation coliving (Hmlet, now part of Ascott's lyf), premium-residential coliving for expat professionals (Cove, lyf). What doesn't: nomad-style flex-stay, mass-market affordability product. The Singapore market is small but premium, typical RevPAB 50-100% above European equivalents. Eugene's read on long-term viability seems right: it's a real but tightly-constrained category.

The Houston coliving tower restart

The Museum District coliving project resuming after a 2024 development hold reflects a broader US Sunbelt thesis: post-2020 institutional appetite for coliving cooled significantly through 2022-2024, but capital is selectively returning to specific markets (Texas metros, Florida, Tennessee) where regulatory environment is permissive and population growth is real.

The Houston project is worth watching as a barometer. If it lease-ups to 88%+ stabilized within 18 months of opening, expect more institutional capital to follow into US Sunbelt coliving in 2026-2027. If it stalls, expect another 2-3 year pause for the asset class in the US.

The luxury coliving trend: what's actually new

"Luxury coliving" as a real estate trend has been called out multiple times since 2018. What's new in the 2024-2026 wave: it's specifically focused on diaspora investors and high-net-worth-individual residents, not aspirational mid-market. The economics are different too, RevPAB 2-3x the broader market, ALOS often 12-24 months (much longer than typical), tenant credit quality dramatically higher, capex per bed sometimes $80,000-150,000.

The structural question: is this enough of a market to support multiple operators at scale, or is it a thin segment that supports 2-3 brands globally? Our read: it's the latter. The luxury coliving segment is real but small. Expect 3-5 operators globally to scale to 1,000+ beds in this tier; the rest will struggle to find demand depth.