It's been a while, but the Coliving Cocktail is back! 🙌
This newsletter is filled with the latest news, publications, information and discoveries around coliving. Plus, you'll discover my key talk about community building from the Co-Liv Summit.
Enjoy the slurp and have a great read! 😋
Newest Coliving Publications
● Big coliving mergers continue 👀
Yes, the coliving industry of asset-light operators is increasingly getting more narrow. In the last two months, European coliving operator Habyt closed a $24M funding round while also merging with coliving operator Homefully (after having acquired Quarters Europe); and American operator Common just took over the 7,500 units from competitors Starcity, who recently acquired Ollie. In the latter case, my guess is that the vertically integrated coliving operator wasn't able to showcase its development capacity, and failed short to capitalize on larger buildings.
● Is coliving actually just co(nvenience)-living? 🤐
Kim Velsey wrote a compelling piece on Curbed, explaining how most coliving residents she interviewed truly just desired flexibility and convenience, not community. The article gives an amazing recap at where the coliving scene is at and how the capitalist commune dream has proved itself more capitalistic than communal. Read here.
Note: another long-format article by the New Yorker shines light on how real communes truly are able to get residents better off. A different model, yet shining light on the emergence of self-driven communities. Read it here.
● Legal changes in India to attract institutional investment 💰
The recently passed Model Tenancy Act (MTA) is expected to bridge the trust deficit between tenants and landlords by clearly delineating their obligations and will eventually help unlock vacant houses across the country. Read more here.
Newest Coliving Publications
● Learn the latest coliving trends with the Co-Liv Summit Report! 📈
Created after the successful Co-Liv Summit, the Summit Report gives you access to important highlights from the Co-Liv Summit 2021, major industry statistics and polls, list of free talks from the Summit, key insights from panel discussions, and opportunities for involvement.
● The newest edition of Coliving Insights is out! 📖
This time, the big topic lies around "Fostering thriving communities in shared living" - definitely my favorite! I've personally wrote a big piece on understanding the stages of user experience and my top 10 recommendations on what processes to implement as a coliving operator.
A new design guide explores the depth of the coliving and coworking revolution. Authored by Dezeen editor-at-large Amy Frearson and Naomi Cleaver, the book also tries to showcase how coliving is not only for millenials, but can be created to serve much larger publications. It also showcases 7 coliving operators and what sets them apart design-wise.
● Finally: CoCo releases the ultimate Coliving Tech Guide! 📲
Our friends at Conscious Coliving did an amazing job at releasing the first, super comprehensive tech guide. What technology solutions should operators use? What are the differences between PMS and community management solutions? What else can technology track within coliving operations?
At the Co-Liv Summit, I gave a keynote on the Art of Community Building, which you can now listen to for free.
In this 10min talk, I explain the key concepts that have guided my thinking over the last year when it comes to building robust, healthy and engaged communities.
Among others, I am sharing...
● The main stages of the User Community Experience (UCX) and how to think your coliving experience through them
● My #1 equation that defines the health of communities
● The 10 recommendations I give every operator (and how to decide which one to focus on first)
● And insights into the different community building approaches, especially on the top-down vs. bottom-up model
The social housing project Lazare, which puts together students/young professionals and formerly homeless people, created a masterpiece when it comes to coliving promotion.
The video is in French, but head over to watch it if you understand - it showcases real people, in the funniest yet most authentic way. Incredible - watch it here!
● 11 Tips to Keep your Coliving Community Clean 🧽
In another post by Supernuclear, Phil explains the best practices that he implements in coliving spaces to get rid of the "tragedy of the commons" - when things like cleaning dishes end up not working because people feel de-responsibilized.
In this article, you'll learn techniques to share responsibility amongst residents, the "zink zero" principle and why not having drying racks. Read the whole post here!
● Why most communities fail ☠️
A little Twitter thread by Houck who also wrote the newsletter CollabDaily, on why most communities fail. Highly recommend this short read.
● Some early coliving experiments
Jay Standish used to run Sandbox House, a coliving spaces back in 2014 with the goal to test the limits of sharing. In this article from 2014, you'll discover what metrics the self-organized coliving community had to track the degree of sharing between members. I'd love to read all of their learnings! Discover it here.
Some Personal Updates
Since the last newsletter two months back, my life has been marked by a few special moments: the Co-Liv Summit marked the end of a chapter (and the beginning of a new one), bringing together the whole team and uniting the coliving world.
Then, I spent three weeks in Ibiza solo with my partner, which made me live outside of "coliving" for a while and let me explore the "normal" life. Finally, the last weeks were driven by beautiful encounters, a 5-day offline festival organized by a few friends of mine, and some more introspective time.
Where is this heading? I'm not so sure.
The only thing is know right now is that my #1 priority should remain my mental (and physical health), followed by my #2 priority - namely, to publish the Art of Coliving book.
Release date: September 1st!
I'm also more and more interested by the power of tokenization of real estate and coliving communities. If you're into this, let's chat!
PS: If you have any thoughts on what you just read, please share them with me. And if someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.
The Coliving Cocktail newsletter fills you twice a month with the latest updates from the coliving industry, major content pieces, upcoming industry events, and personal insights from our founder on how to improve your user experience.
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