EC10: The One-Building-Town, Digital Nomad Crowdfunding, And More.

🔁📝Missed last week’s update? We explored how coliving spaces are being created from unused offices and covered the latest industry conferences. Catch up by clicking the link below:

---

Watch the Story of the One-Building-Town.

If you drive far into Alaska, you will encounter Whittier - is a coastal city hidden between towering mountains and the ocean. With an area of approximately 51 square kilometers or 20 square miles, it has only one residential complex for its entire population.

In short: the world’s only coliving-town!

In this video, you can see how people live - with their own micro-studios, shared space for the community, including two churches and one former police station in the building!

Digital Nomads Gather to Buy Coliving Properties

The idea: 150 digital nomads will buy 25 coliving over the next 5 years.

Led by digital nomad and entrepreneur Philipp Alexander Weber, individuals can propose a coliving space to the Coliving Frilingue network. They put down 40% of the downpayment and expect the rest to be crowdfunded by the community.

So far, the project has funded one place in Switzerland and is looking for two other places in Montenegro and Germany.

Raising funding through your community is going to become more popular over the next years.

Coliving companies such as Vitanovae have successfully crowdfunded parts of their company on Lita, while Spanish operator Circles House raised 230,000€ on Crowdcube.

Where the models differ is in terms of what individuals can invest in: the holding company (such as in the case of Vitanovae and Circles House) or the property itself, such as in the case of Coliving Frilingue.

Upcoming Coliving Events

• ULI Poland Places + Spaces: Emerging Living Concepts (February 29) is a series of events where ULI regularly presents high-profile, international projects and speakers to inspire and discuss “best practice” development principles.
• Housing Matters! (March 11) will unite 500+ coliving, BTR and housing professionals. This event by MIPIM and Co-Liv will also welcome public officials (including the German housing minister) and high-level executives. This event is ideal for anyone looking to find quality partners in their coliving venture.
• The Coliving Gathering (April 18-21) by Coliving Hub will gather a few dozen digital nomad coliving operators. This conference is great for anyone wanting to connect with peers.

Investment Insights from Colliers

Paddy Allen, Head of Operational Capital Markets at Colliers, started a bi-monthly newsletter called Living Capital Investor.

In the first edition, he looks at investment sectors in the real estate market and comes to three conclusions:

First, consolidation s will probably happen further in the market over the coming years.

Second, regulation s for new asset classes (such as coliving) will remain a burden to enter the market (quickly).

And, most importantly, investors will continue to diversif y:

“More long-term investors will enter the sector with existing partners creating new platforms within their businesses, and existing platforms will broaden their abilities to encompass all living sectors, rather than just one vertical. This is driven by an attempt to accelerate their exposure to more ‘non-cyclical’ and inflation hedged investments in real estate.”Read the full edition here.

On Multigenerational Coliving

UK-based student and young professional rental platform Hybr created in partnership with Birchgrove Life a new multigenerational concept, mixing young professionals with seniors under one roof.

This is just a starting trend. In the UK, associations such as Share and Care connect homeowner seniors with families in need for affordable housing.

As this story explains, the model is simple:

“In exchange for just £150 a month, Lucy (a 26-year NHS medic) provides Lily (a 96-year old homeowner) with 15 hours of help each week. Their bond transcends the transactional nature of their arrangement, blossoming into a genuine friendship despite their 66-year age difference.”

Multigenerational coliving is on the rise. We’re looking forward to seeing more examples and concepts emerge in the near future!

Everything Else Coliving

Operators & Growth

• UK coliving operator Mason & Fifth is about to open a new residence, Primrose Hill, which will be dedicated to short-stay only and adopt the guest-house model.
• Salt Lake Crossing, a 300-unit coliving and coworking concept, is nearing completion and starting pre-leases. See for yourself one of their micro-unit designs:

• A new coliving operator has launched in India. Yello! just opened its first location on an 8000m2 property - targeting young professionals but also students in nearby universities.

Market & Investment

• Australia’s build-to-rent supply is expected skyrocket by almost 3.5x times by 2026, with an additional 16,500 apartments set to enter the market.
• Singapore’s Capitaland sets up $600m APAC coliving fund: CapitaLand Investment (CLI) aims to raise as much as $600 million for a newly established Asia Pacific fund targeting serviced residence and co-living opportunities which it is seeding with a pair of assets from its Ascott lodging division.
• Coliving developer Re:shape is seeking a funding partner to build out its pipeline of almost 2,000 beds in and around London after buying three sites in the space of five weeks.
• Meanwhile, also in the UK, Recognise Bank has provided a £7.5m facility for a co-living accommodation block in canary Wharf.
• A recap of where the coliving industry is at in 2024: to just mention one quote from the article that showcases demand for coliving, “the amount of total operational coliving beds in the UK amounting to just over 31,000. Meanwhile the core target market for co-living in the UK is currently estimated at about 725,000 people, signifying a huge untouched market for coliving.“

Other Resources

• Are you struggling to come up with a name for your brand? Check out this tool for inspiration (although, ChatGPT might just be as good)!

Want to be featured in the next newsletter? Tag #everythingcoliving on LinkedIn or Twitter for us to find your company updates!

That’s it for this week! We hope you enjoyed and wish you a good weekend,

────────────────────────────────────────────

🆕 Up Next:

🔗 EC11: AirBnbs goes AI, the crucial role of Onboarding, and new PMS arrivals.

🔗 EC12: Listening to Neighbors, A New London Coliving Policy, And Coliving Growth in Asia.