Coliving

I’m fascinated by this.

In one of Montrose’s newest residential projects opening next year, renters will be able to walk into fully furnished spaces stocked with basic supplies, paying rents below market rate in one of Houston’s trendiest neighborhoods.

Rent will include professional cleaning and utilities, and they’ll have access to happy hours and group outings. The only catch: They could be living with strangers.

That’s because the 238-unit development, UNITi Montrose, will offer coliving, a style of communal living growing in Houston involving professionally managed roommate housing. Think of it as a version of college dorms for working adults.

The nine-story UNITi Montrose at 701 Richmond will be operated by Common, one of the largest providers of coliving in North America, in partnership with Dallas-based developer the Shelter Cos. Meanwhile in the Museum District, Chicago-based the X Co. is building a 33-story, 646-bed story coliving community. And across the area in multiple smaller rentals, Atlanta-based affordable housing startup, PadSplit, has 585 coliving units and nearly 1,200 planned. Across Houston, that could total at least 2,000 units pitched as some variation of coliving, including apartments and single-family rentals, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.

In a coliving community, residents can often find cheaper rent, more flexible lease terms and more social interaction while avoiding the pitfalls of typical shared housing, like finding roommates and bickering over bills.

Coliving emerged several years as an affordable alternative for renters in New York and Los Angeles. But in recent years, as more people moved to the Sun Belt, coliving providers followed, offering a solution to rising rents and inflation. There are at least 70,000 professionally managed coliving units planned in the U.S., real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield estimates.

“The industry started with converting brownstones in New York to coliving situations, but now we find many of our clients have seen the value in building coliving from ground up,” said Karlene Holloman, CEO of Common, which has raised $110 million in venture capital and expects to have at least 8,000 coliving beds by the end of 2023. “It’s a growing industry.”

[…]

“A group of roommates sharing an apartment to save money is not a novel concept, but this idea as a business plan has not been institutionalized or scaled in a way that we could do,” said Andrew Kerr, director of acquisitions at the X Co. The firm has 5,300 coliving beds in the pipeline.

Coliving can still come with the headaches of potential roommate disagreements, personality clashes or complaints about noise, security and cleanliness. But coliving providers say they can give residents a more “frictionless” experience by handling background checks, vetting roommates and verifying their income. If a resident misses rent, the other roommates aren’t left to foot the bill, said Mark Drumm, principal at The Shelter Cos. And if needed, some coliving providers allow residents to transfer to different properties without breaking their lease.

And while landlords juggle multiple leases per home, coliving spaces typically fill up about 50 percent faster than standard apartments, according to Cushman and Wakefield. Across Common’s portfolio, for example, after a renter moves out of a coliving bedroom, they’re typically replaced within three days, said Holloman of Common.

I like this for a couple of reasons. One is simply that it’s an affordable living option that will be appealing to mostly younger and single folks who want to be in the urban centers. Thirty years ago when that included me, there were tons of cheap rental houses that you and a buddy or two could get in Montrose and thereabouts. That’s long gone now, but this sounds like a perfectly decent alternative. It’s also good for people who have more temporary housing needs – folks who are here for the short term on a work gig, for example – because shorter leases and furnished units are available. On a broader point, it’s just a good and healthy thing for the local ecosystem to have a variety of housing options, catering to different groups of people. As a former Montrose resident and now longtime Heights person, it’s the trend towards every lot having a 4000+ square foot carbon-copy mansion-wannabe that I lament. It’s aesthetically boring, and I say that as someone who knows nothing about architecture. Variety is good, in many forms. I’m rooting for this to succeed.

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