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Planning, launching or scaling coliving in Ireland? Get consulting grounded in Everything Coliving's Ireland 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
Consulting for coliving in Ireland means working inside one of Europe's most acute housing shortages, where demand for well run shared living is real but the policy conversation around it is unusually loud and unusually skeptical. I help operators and investors separate genuine, durable opportunity from projects that will attract political and planning friction before they ever open.
The Irish market rewards operators who position coliving as high quality, professionally managed housing rather than as a density workaround. With 13 years in the sector I focus engagements on getting the product, the resident promise, and the local approvals story to line up so the building still makes sense in five years.
Most of my Ireland work is early: someone has a site, a conversion, or a thesis, and needs an honest read on whether shared living is the right use before serious capital goes in.
Ireland's coliving story is shaped by Dublin, where housing pressure has been severe for years and where the term coliving became politically charged early. That history matters. An operator entering Ireland is entering a market where the public and many decision makers have a formed opinion about shared living, and that opinion is not automatically positive.
Outside Dublin, cities like Cork, Galway, and Limerick have their own demand drivers, often tied to universities, hospitals, and a growing base of remote and contract workers. These markets are smaller and thinner, which changes how you think about scale, staffing, and lease up pace.
The practical implication is that Ireland is not one market. A model that pencils in central Dublin can be wrong in Galway, and a positioning that survives planning in one local authority may not travel. I treat each site as its own case.
Planning and housing policy in Ireland have moved several times in recent years, and the treatment of shared living specifically has been a moving target. I do not give legal advice, and I always tell clients to confirm the current position with Irish planning and legal counsel before committing, because what was permissible in one cycle may not be in the next.
In general terms, the questions that decide an Irish project are whether the use is permitted on the site, how the local authority views shared living at that location, what standards apply to unit sizes and amenities, and how tenancy and consumer protections apply to the residents you intend to house. Each of these should be verified locally rather than assumed from another market.
My role is to make sure you are asking these questions before you fall in love with a site, and that your model has room to absorb the answers. I would rather find a fatal planning or tenure issue in week two than have a client discover it after acquisition.
The honest Irish demand story is about people priced out of conventional rentals and looking for a manageable, flexible, furnished option: early career professionals, people relocating for work, contract and healthcare staff, and returning emigrants who need a soft landing. These are the residents who make coliving stick rather than treat it as a last resort.
Getting the resident definition right protects you from two failure modes. One is building for a premium lifestyle tenant who does not exist in enough numbers at your location. The other is drifting into being emergency or crisis accommodation, which is a different business with different obligations.
I push clients to write down, specifically, who the building is for, what they can pay, and what would make them stay a second year. That definition then drives unit mix, amenity, pricing, and the operating model.
Ireland's cost base, particularly in Dublin, is high, and staffing is not cheap or always easy to find. The operating models that hold up are ones where the service promise is real but efficiently delivered, and where community is a genuine retention tool rather than an expensive add on that residents do not value.
Because regional markets are thin, I am cautious about models that assume fast lease up or heavy on site staffing at small buildings. Often the right answer is a leaner staffing structure, clustering of sites, or technology that reduces the need for a permanent on site presence, always tested against what residents actually need.
Retention is the quiet driver of Irish coliving economics. In a high cost market, every avoidable move out hurts, so I spend real time on the resident experience that keeps people past the first lease.
Engagements usually start with a candid feasibility read on a specific site or thesis: is shared living the right use here, and does it survive both the numbers and the local approvals story. If it does not, I say so, because a clear no early is worth more than a slow yes.
From there I help shape the resident definition, the product and amenity, the operating and staffing model, and the narrative you will need for stakeholders and, where relevant, the community. I bring the pattern library from 13 years across many markets, adapted to Irish realities rather than imported wholesale.
I work as an independent advisor, not a broker or a builder. My only interest is that the project is sound, which means my advice sometimes costs a client an acquisition they were excited about.
Worked example
Imagine an investor with an older Dublin office building considering conversion to roughly 90 coliving rooms (illustrative figure). The spreadsheet works at an assumed rent that quietly sits at the top of what the target resident can pay, and the plan assumes lease up in a few months.
In a feasibility engagement I would pressure test three things: whether the shared living use is genuinely supported at that location under current policy (to be confirmed with local counsel), whether the assumed rent matches a real resident who exists in volume, and whether the lease up pace is realistic in that submarket. Suppose the honest read is that rent needs to come down maybe 12 percent to reach a durable resident, and lease up is slower than modeled.
That changes the deal, but it changes it before acquisition rather than after. The client can renegotiate the basis, redesign the unit mix, or walk away, which in a high cost market is often the most valuable outcome the engagement can produce.
Every recommendation is grounded in Everything Coliving’s own research for Ireland.
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