Co-living market expands: How the young pay the rent
After years of living alone and a sixmonth-long apartment hunt in New York City, 27-year-old Jade X found what she called the “holy grail” of living situations — roommates she had never met.
For two years, the hotel manager had been renting a $1,200-a-month onebedroom apartment in a residential section of the Bronx, where she says she didn’t have any friends, felt little sense of community and “there was literally nothing to do.”
“I didn’t feel safe, and it really didn’t fit my vibe,” the free-spirited fashion design enthusiast said. “I liked the price of the apartment, but then again, you get what you pay for.”
After a friend recommended that she look into one of the metro area’s many communal living companies, Jade did some digging and quickly applied. Two weeks later, she moved into her new shared apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that is operated by Venn, a network of shared homes and spaces in the neighborhood.
“Everyone who moves around New York City has their horror stories; but for the first time in my life, this was not one of them,” Jade said about moving into the two-story duplex.
With millennials carrying more student debt than ever before, earning less than their parents and dealing with unaffordably high rents in big cities, experts say “communal living” spaces in today’s sharing economy are both convenient and necessary.
The lifestyle often is compared to adult dorms, with the communities formed intentionally for residential transplants. Hot spots span from L.A. to New York City, with budding hubs in metro areas nationwide.
Jade’s apartment is run by Venn, an Israeli startup that leases and renovates properties before renting many of them as shared spaces. The 5-year-old company says it invests revenue back into the neighborhood by funding local businesses and programs to minimize displacement.
“I think that the idea is about creating a certain lifestyle where people live, and it’s more like a hotel with amenities than what you would think of as a traditional apartment complex,” said Dana Bull, an real estate agent with Sagan Harborside Sotheby’s International Realty who has experience working with millennial clients.
Expanding market
Co-living company Common has 27 buildings in six markets in the U.S. and announced last month that it is expanding into Canada. Other companies such as WeWork’s WeLive, Ollie, and Quarters also are expanding their communal living options. In the next few years, the number of co-living spaces in the U.S. is expected to triple, according to a 2019 report by real estate firm Cushman & Wake field.
Urban co-habitats allow residents, often referred to as members, to share the living and kitchen areas of pre-furnished apartments. The living arrangement gives tenants access to amenities that would otherwise be available only at luxury properties, such as rooftop decks with pools and open workspaces for people who work from home.
And millennials and Generation Z are at the center. Forty-three percent of Gen Z say they’ve lived with roommates they didn’t know compared with 31% of Millennials, Credit Karma found. Seventeen percent of millennials said they were somewhat to very likely to move in with roommates they didn’t know in the future, compared with 30% of Gen Z respondents.
Where elder populations may find living with multiple strangers after a certain age strange, almost half of Gen Z’ers think four or more people could be reasonably housed in a two-bedroom apartment.
“We see this generation getting more creative to live how or where they want to live,” said Dana Marineau, Brand VP of Credit Karma, which has more than 85 million members in the United States and Canada, including almost half of all U.S. millennials.