"Roommate matching isn't just about finding someone to share an apartment with—it's about building a thriving community where residents can connect, support, and grow together." - Alex Mitchell
How NYC's Short-Term Rental Ban is Fueling Long Term Shared Living
New York City’s stringent regulations on short-term rentals, initiated under Local Law 18, have significantly reshaped the housing and tourism landscape. With a dramatic 80% reduction in legal short-term rentals, the city aimed to address the severe housing shortage. However, this has led to a surge in hotel prices, impacting tourists and the hospitality sector.
This shift underscores the growing trend towards shared living spaces in the city. With the scarcity of short-term rentals, co-living arrangements are becoming a more appealing option for both residents and visitors looking for affordable, community-oriented living solutions.
- Enforcement of LL18: NYC enforced new short-term rental regulations (Local Law 18) in September last year.
- Drop in Legal Listings: Legal short-term rentals dropped to 2,276 from over 22,000 pre-law enforcement.
Application Data: NYC received 6,395 applications for short-term rentals; 2,276 approved, 1,746 denied, and 2,269 requested additional information.
Conversion to Long-Term Rentals: Listings for stays over 30 days have risen significantly as many short-term rentals converted to longer terms.
Impact on Housing: The policy aims to alleviate housing shortages, with the city’s home-vacancy rate at a historic low of 1.4%.
Hotel Prices Soar: Hotel occupancy hit 82% last year with an average room price reaching $301 per night, up 8.5% since 2022.
Economic Effects: Restricting short-term rentals hasn’t clearly improved housing affordability but has contributed to higher hotel prices.
Legal and Industry Response: Airbnb lost a court case to prevent LL18, leading to reduced accommodation options for visitors.
Are You Looking To Start A Coliving Business?
We have something coming up for you that can help you build a sustainable coliving business. If you are interested, please reply to this email or mail us at coliving@artof.co, and we will get back to you.
Are You Building Multigenerational Coliving Projects?
Coliving does not appeal only to one age group. The truth is that, while coliving operators started with targeting the young professionals group, coliving spaces are home to many people in their fifties, sixties, and sometimes even seventies.
And that is even more true for the leading coliving players, who by default will experience hosting a wider audience.
Yet, we’ve barely come across any multigenerational coliving developments offering rental offerings to different age groups.
There are many intergenerational programs out there, most of them combining students with seniors, and there are many inspirations from the cooperative and cohousing sectors, but surprisingly few in the BTR, and more specifically, the coliving sector.
With coliving operators expanding their offerings, going from shared living to studios to multi-family products and short-stay rentals, the next logical step is to expand target audiences and create multigenerational housing offerings.
We personally believe that if done right, we can create high-value housing situations whereby different generations and families of different sizes (singles, couples, parents with kids) share the same space, amenities, and communal lifestyle.
We are curious to read all your thoughts and any inspirations you have in the sector! If you are running a multigenerational project or want to start one, please reply to this email or write to us at coliving@artof.co. We may have something interesting for you.
Coliving Community Program
Our partners, Conscious Coliving have a few spots open for the second cohort of their Coliving Community Program, which will start in the fall.
The program brings together shared living operators to upskill on strategies that benefit your business, enhance your community experience, and generate social and environmental value. It will support you in incorporating a "conscious coliving" approach, including a strong focus on fostering practices that strengthen connection with oneself, others, and nature.
Conscious Coliving is also seeking additional funding and research partners for a UK research / lobbying initiative that consists of anevidence-backed reportto educate UK councils on the need and value of coliving and afollow-up publicity campaign.
For more information, feel free to reach out to co-founder Matt Lesniak here.
How To Get The Best Roommate Matches For Coliving Spaces?
Shared living is gaining more and more steam. See the Google trends since 2004. Along with this growth, we have started to see the challenges that shared living brings to the table. Imagine getting stuck with a person with a totally opposite personality in the same apartment for the contract period. This is the exact use case Roommate Connect is built for.
Roommate Connect is a one-of-a-kind, scientific roommate matching tool that matches users on both similarities and differences proven in research to be predictive of compatibility. The ease-of-use platform seamlessly integrates with housing management systems while providing automated and flexible matching options.
Everything Else Coliving
- Savallis reports on Korea’s living sector. Read here.
- This kind of co-living—hotel-style developments with shared communal facilities such as games rooms and gyms—is big news in London. According to research by Savills, more than 2,000 new co-living bedrooms were completed in the city last year, bringing the total to 5,600. Another 1,800 are being built, and there are 13,000 more in the pipeline. In September, SpareRoom calculated there were 10,833 rooms to rent in London, and 22,549 people looking.
- JOB ALERT!!! Greystar is hiring a community manager in Washington, DC. If you want to explore this opportunity, you can apply here.
- Is this the solution? Remote work + Micro communities + Minimalism + More nature in our lives. Read what Mayur from NomadGao.com has to say about this in this LinkedIn post.
- The community builders behind The Commons, Solaris, and The Neighborhood are coming together to fund more social and community infrastructure in the heart of SF. Learn more about City Campus here.
- Kindred: A home sharing platform that actually works. Learn more about it here.
- Innovation in the shared economy. Life Time wants to be more than just another gym. The luxe chain is trying to defy the fitness industry’s patchy financial track record by becoming a brand on par with Walt Disney. A business model that’s skewing toward WeWork’s, however, gives the ambition a heavy lift. Read more here.
- Tax sops on accommodation to give leg up to co-living biz in India.
- Sattva Group and Bain Capital are launching a float platform to build co-living assets.
- Singapore’s The Assembly Place has raised S$5.33 million ($3.9 million) from a pre-Series A funding exercise anchored by Apricot Capital
We hope you enjoyed this edition and wish you a great weekend ahead. Reply us with your thoughts on what more you want to read and if you have any feedback.
If you want us to cover anything, please mail it to us on coliving@artof.co
Gui Perdrix & Mayank Pokharna
The Artof.Co team