About co-living

🏡 What is co-living?

Co-living is a way to live and share an apartment with other like-minded people. Co-living is fast gaining in popularity across the globe as the younger urban generation increasingly puts more value on flexibility and convenience of living.

It’s important to note that modern co-living comes in all shapes and forms. The term has been used loosely for different kinds of living arrangements: from “big box co-living” buildings with hundreds of small pod-style rooms to family-style apartments turned co-living homes (think of the apartment from “Friends”).

What all these co-living arrangements share is the willingness to create a place to live that both provides some private space as well as plenty of shared space to facilitate community engagements.

📈 Why is co-living gaining in popularity?

There are a few colliding trends that are increasingly powering the co-living movement:

• Flexible job market
  ‍We, millennials, tend to change jobs around every 2 years. We are always striving for a better opportunity, which subsequently means we are also less tied to a particular city. The world is “flat” for us. That’s why we require different, more flexible type of housing.
• Increase in loneliness
  ‍This one is loosely connected to the previous point; there is a concerning trend of increasing loneliness among millennials. Recent research shows that almost 10% of people aged 16 to 24 were "always or often" lonely.
• Move to urban areas
  ‍The world is moving to cities - in fact, it is expected that more than 70% of world population will live in urban areas by 2050. That’s why new living arrangements are sprouting up in cities to accommodate this ever growing urban population.
• Access over ownership
  ‍Millennials have very different spending habits compared to the previous generation. It’s not about owning a car or a house anymore. It’s about having an immediate, convenient access to whatever you need when you need it for as long as you need it.
• An app for everything
  ‍With a press of a button you can now summon food from your favourite restaurant, order a taxi or rent an electric scooter. So why does it still take a week to get in contact with your landlord? The consumer expectations have changed dramatically in the last decade and we want everything to happen immediately.

📜 Where does co-living come from?

Modern co-living is an evolution of various age-old concepts. The cohousing concept, for example, started in 1960s Denmark. Another example of an early co-living concept is a famous minimalist shared living space called Isokon which was started in London in 1933.

🙋 Who is co-living for?

There are many different types of co-living. Co-living for students, co-living for artists, co-living for digital nomads and even co-living for entrepreneurs.

At LifeX, for example, we decided to focus on inclusive and flexible co-living homes for young professionals. We house people from 50+ nationalities; from chefs to artists and all the way to digital creators.

🧹 Who takes care of cleaning in co-living places?

This very much depends on whether you organise a flatshare yourself or you live at a professionally managed co-living place.

At LifeX co-living, for example, we provide cleaning of shared spaces several times a week (kitchen, living room, bathrooms) and the private spaces once a week. This is designed in a way that you can always rely on coming home to a clean apartment.

What does co-living include?

This depends on the co-living provider. At LifeX we focus on providing co-living homes for 4-8 people and making the stay as stress-free as possible. This means we provide regular cleaning of the apartments, shared basic supplies and flexible terms.

How is LifeX co-living different from big co-living places?

LifeX focuses on what we call co-living homes. We find big apartments in central city areas that are often too expensive for families. Sometimes these apartments are even empty. These apartments are usually 150-400 square metres and become a comfortable home for 4-8 people in LifeX.

What’s the difference between a flatshare and coliving?

A flatshare is usually an informal agreement between a group of people to share an apartment. These are standard student living arrangements for example.

Co-living, on the other hand, most often adds a bit more community and shared services to the equation. At LifeX, for example, we make sure that each apartment has both a big kitchen and a living room to help facilitate social interactions.