It's all about convenience, community and cost
Why it's not the same as having a roommate
Want to bid farewell to the painful search for roommates, fights over who gets the larger bedroom or who used the last piece of toilet paper, not to mention lugging old furniture from one apartment to the next? Co-living might be for you.
“Co-living is a new way of renting designed to ease the housing crisis for urban professionals, creatives and entrepreneurs working in increasingly unaffordable and isolated cities,” Node, an international leader in co-living, says on its website.
It dubs co-living “the next generation housing solution for the world's travelling workforce,” though other developers note co-living is also ideally suited to young professionals who want to launch their careers in a city that could very well be close to home but would otherwise be unaffordable.
At its core, co-living embraces what Node refers to as the 3 `Cs': cost (affordability), convenience and community. “Costs are reduced by creating smaller but more efficiently designed units and making use of shared communal spaces,” it explains.
“Convenience is achieved by providing a one-stop lifestyle solution for renters: roommate matching, furniture and utilities all handled in one go. Community is fostered via a living culture where residents meet and connect physically and digitally, which can help tackle issues of loneliness and make city living more vibrant and experiential.”
Node's first co-living location opened in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2017. Since then, it has built projects in Los Angeles, Dublin, London and Manchester, England. Next up: Seattle, and Kitchener-Waterloo, where Node founder and CEO Anil Khera attended the University of Waterloo.
In Ottawa, Canadian real estate developer Dream Unlimited Corp. is building a 24-storey, 252-bed building on the Ottawa River under the `Zibi' brand. It has teamed up with U.S.-based co-living company Common Living Inc. to manage the property in its first international expansion.
Real estate experts like Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist CIBC Capital Markets, are bullish on built-to-rent properties, an emerging asset class that caters to the changing needs of both renters and property developers.
“Supply is not keeping up with demand and there is considerable demand for rental as it becomes more and more difficult for young Canadians to get into the market,” Tal said in a panel discussion on the build-to-rent market in a recent webinar hosted by co-living specialists Common Living.
Fellow panellist Susan Tjarksen, managing director for Cushman and Wakefield, noted rental rates are growing at three per cent each year while incomes are growing at one per cent each year — underscoring the demand for affordable rental housing.
Co-living projects are “thriving ” in the U.S. “They come for the cost convenience but stay for the community,”
Tjarksen said. “This is a self-selected resident. They see it as an opportunity to meet new friends. It is a lifestyle choice they know they are signing up for.” She suggested letting co-living projects qualify as affordable housing units, particularly in dense urban environments.
Tighter mortgage rules, affordability constraints, increased construction costs and more transient lifestyle preferences from Canada's growing population are contributing to the steady decline of home ownership rates across the country and adding to the increase in demand for rental housing, notes Core Development Group.
Co-living – sometimes referred to as roommating, co-housing or house-sharing – is an idea whose time has come, especially in large urban centres like Toronto, where the shortfall in rental housing will continue to place upward pressure on already unaffordable rent prices in urban areas, Core CEO & founder Corey Hawtin said in the panel discussion.
Co-living represents 30 to 50 per cent of all rental households in some U.S. urban centres and an estimated 60 per cent of people are roommating in the Greater Toronto Area, Hawtin reports. “We're creating an environment for people to have roommates and to be able to pay less on their bill,” he said in an interview with the Sun.
“At the same time, we're taking away some of the friction points traditional roommates fight about, like who's paying the head lease and who's paying the sublease and who collects that.”