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Site and deal assessment, unit economics, and a clear go or no-go before you commit capital to a coliving project.
Mayank Pokharna · Founder, Everything Coliving
13 years in coliving · Reviewed by the Everything Coliving team
Feasibility work answers one question before you commit capital: does this specific building, at this specific rent, in this specific market, actually pencil as coliving? It is a structured stress test of the deal, not a pitch deck.
The aim is a defensible go, no-go, or renegotiate decision backed by unit economics you can take to a lender or an investment committee. Most sites that look exciting in a viewing fall apart when you model realistic occupancy, staffing, and turnover.
Done early, this saves you from the most expensive mistake in the sector: signing a lease or buying an asset whose numbers only work on a spreadsheet that assumes everything goes right.
Feasibility spans the deal and the site. On the deal side we model rent per bed against your fully loaded operating cost, including staffing, cleaning, utilities, software, marketing, voids, and a realistic bad debt allowance. On the site side we look at how many lettable beds the building actually yields once you subtract shared kitchens, lounges, laundry, back of house, and circulation.
We also test the assumptions that quietly sink projects: the ramp period before you hit stabilised occupancy, the seasonality of demand in that catchment, and the true cost of tenant turnover when the average stay is measured in months rather than years.
The output is a model you can interrogate, not a single headline yield. You should be able to change one input, such as achieved rent or average length of stay, and see the deal move.
We start from your real numbers, not sector averages. That means the actual head rent or purchase price, the actual building plans, and the actual local rents for comparable rooms and studios. Where data is thin, we say so and model a range rather than inventing a point estimate.
From there we build a single model with clearly labelled assumptions, then run it through downside cases. A deal that only works at ninety five percent occupancy and premium rents is not a deal, it is a hope. We want to see what happens at a more sober occupancy and a slower ramp.
You leave with a recommendation and the reasoning behind it, so that if you disagree you can see exactly which assumption we differ on and change it yourself.
A good feasibility outcome is boring in the best way: a clear decision, a model you trust, and no nasty surprises in month six. The deal either clears your return threshold with room to spare on realistic assumptions, or it does not and you walk away having spent a small fee instead of a large lease commitment.
It also gives you leverage. When the model shows the deal only works below a certain head rent, that becomes your negotiating line with the landlord or vendor. Feasibility is as much a negotiation tool as a filter.
The most common error is modelling coliving like a single let and forgetting how much space, staff, and money the shared experience consumes. Beds get counted generously, communal areas get counted as almost free, and the operating cost per bed comes in far higher than the plan assumed.
The second error is ignoring the ramp. A new building does not fill overnight, and the months of low occupancy while you build demand can be the difference between a deal that works and one that bleeds cash through its first year.
The third is treating turnover as an afterthought. When the average stay is short, every move out carries a cleaning, marketing, and void cost, and a building with high churn can be busy and still unprofitable.
Worked example
Imagine a 24 bed building offered at a head rent that works out to roughly 800 a month per bed to the operator, with achievable resident rents around 1,200 a month. On paper that spread looks healthy. The feasibility model then subtracts staffing, cleaning, utilities, software, marketing, and a void allowance, and layers in a six month ramp to stabilised occupancy.
Once the shared kitchen, lounge, and back of house space are removed, the building yields fewer truly lettable beds than the headline count suggested, and the fully loaded cost per bed climbs. At a sober ninety percent stabilised occupancy the deal still clears a modest margin, but at eighty five percent with a slower ramp it turns negative in year one.
The recommendation in this example is not simply no. It is: the deal works only if the head rent comes down by a stated amount, or the operator can prove faster lease up in that catchment. That gives the client a specific number to negotiate rather than a vague worry.
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