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Planning, launching or scaling coliving in Colombia? Get consulting grounded in Everything Coliving's Colombia market research, from feasibility and operations to marketing and technology.
Mayank Pokharna · Founder, Everything Coliving
13 years in coliving · Reviewed by the Everything Coliving team
Colombia, and Medellin above all, has become one of Latin America's most talked about coliving destinations, drawing remote workers and nomads alongside a real domestic professional market. I help operators and investors build models that hold up beyond the current wave of enthusiasm and account for genuine local realities.
The opportunity is real, but a lot of the market narrative is built on a favorable exchange rate and a moment of nomad popularity, both of which can shift. My work is about grounding a project in durable local demand, sound structure, and honest operations rather than a trend.
With 13 years in coliving I bring a global pattern library, applied with care to Colombia's specific legal, currency, safety, and cultural context.
Medellin is the center of gravity, with neighborhoods like El Poblado and Laureles drawing a large remote worker and nomad population, alongside growing branded and informal coliving. Bogota and other cities have their own, more domestically driven shared living markets.
Much of the recent momentum has been powered by foreigners whose incomes go far given the exchange rate, which has boosted demand and pricing in nomad heavy neighborhoods. That is a real driver, but it is also a fragile one, tied to currency and to Colombia staying fashionable.
Underneath the nomad story is a genuine domestic demand base of young Colombian professionals and students, which is steadier and less exposed to global trends. A durable business usually needs to understand and often serve that base, not just the visiting foreigners.
Colombian rules relevant to shared living can touch on tenancy and lease law, how short and medium stay accommodation is treated, property ownership by foreigners, business registration, and tax. These vary and can change, and I do not give legal advice, so I always direct clients to qualified Colombian legal and tax counsel for their specific situation.
In general terms, the items to verify early are how your tenure with residents is characterized, whether short stay hospitality style use triggers different rules than longer residential tenancy, how you hold or lease the property, and how the business and its currency exposure are structured. These should be confirmed locally, not assumed from elsewhere.
Currency is a structural, not just operational, issue in Colombia. When revenue and costs sit in different currencies, or when demand depends on a favorable rate for foreigners, that exposure belongs in the structure and the model from the start. I make sure it is not treated as an afterthought.
In Medellin's nomad neighborhoods, the customer is often a foreign remote worker on a medium stay who wants community, comfort, reliable internet, and a good location, and who is comparing Colombia against other global destinations. In the domestic market, the customer is a young Colombian professional or student wanting an affordable, managed home.
The foreign nomad is lucrative today but mobile and trend sensitive. Building only for that resident means your occupancy rises and falls with the exchange rate and Colombia's popularity, which is a risky foundation for a long lived asset.
I push clients to decide, deliberately, how much of the business rests on foreigners versus locals, and to design pricing, product, and community accordingly. A blended base is often more resilient than an all nomad one, even if it is less glamorous.
Nomad oriented coliving in Colombia blends hospitality and residential, so community, events, and location matter enormously and justify premium pricing to foreign residents. But because that demand is transient and trend sensitive, marketing and reputation are ongoing costs and occupancy needs constant tending.
Safety and trust are part of the operating reality in Colombia, and doing them well, through location choice, building security, and reliable management, is both a resident expectation and a genuine differentiator. I treat it as a core part of the product, discussed frankly rather than avoided.
For domestic focused coliving, the model is steadier and closer to conventional managed residential. I help clients match the operating intensity, staffing, and community layer to whichever demand base they are really building for.
Engagements usually begin by separating the trend from the fundamentals: how much of the projected demand and pricing depends on the current exchange rate and Colombia's moment, and what the business looks like on a more conservative base. If it only works on the trend, that is important to know before investing.
From there I help define the resident mix, the operating and community model, pricing across stay lengths and currencies, and the structuring questions to take to local counsel, including currency exposure. I bring lessons from more mature markets, adapted to Colombian realities.
I work as an independent advisor with no stake in any particular property or deal, which is especially useful in a market where a lot of the noise is promotional.
Worked example
Picture an investor opening a 40 room coliving building in El Poblado (illustrative figure), pricing rooms at levels that foreign nomads happily pay today thanks to a favorable exchange rate, and projecting high occupancy on that basis.
In an engagement I would model a more conservative scenario: what happens if the exchange rate moves against foreigners or Colombia cools as a destination, so that fewer foreigners come and those who do pay less. Suppose that scenario implies both a rate cut and lower occupancy, an assumed combined revenue drop of 30 percent from the peak case.
The point is not to predict that outcome but to see whether the building survives it. If it only works on the optimistic case, the fix might be a more blended foreign and domestic resident base, a different pricing structure, or a lower acquisition basis. Grounding the model this way, before committing, is where the value sits, and any tenure, tax, and currency questions still go to local counsel.
Every recommendation is grounded in Everything Coliving’s own research for Colombia.
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