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The coliving market as an emergent financialized
niche real estate sector: a view from Brussels
Charlotte Casier
To cite this article: Charlotte Casier (2023): The coliving market as an emergent
financialized niche real estate sector: a view from Brussels, Housing Studies, DOI:
10.1080/02673037.2023.2176833
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2023.2176833
Published online: 10 Feb 2023.
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HOUSING STUDIES
The coliving market as an emergent financialized
niche real estate sector: a view from Brussels
Charlotte Casier
Institut de Gestion et d’Aménagement du Territoire (IGEAT), Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels,
Belgium; Fonds de la Recherche Scientique – FNRS, Belgium
ABSTRACT
This paper addresses coliving as a product shaped to attract both
young professionals in a student-style accommodation and inves-
tors of various scales, while integrating new geographies and
housing types into capital accumulation. Taking Brussels as
case-study, it answers the question ‘how are new residential prod-
ucts created by the financialization process affecting the private
rental sector?’ by combining quantitative and qualitative methods.
The paper also provides results on intra-urban geographies of
financialized housing. First, coliving is aimed at a particular market
segment consisting of young international workers attracted by
the international functions of Brussels. To attract this clientele to
a student-style accommodation, operators must promote a unique
experience. Second, the Brussels coliving market illustrates that
the financialization of the private rental sector relies notably on
the creation of new products shaped so that investors of various
scales can easily inject their capital. Third, most Brussels coliving
establishments remain small-scale projects located in renovated
old single-family houses.
Introduction
In January 2020, an article in the New York Times, ‘Co-Living Grows Up’, described
the development of that sector in New York City as a ‘torrent’ (Margolies, 2020).
Coliving is a type of shared housing, rented and managed by private companies.
Furnished rooms or very small private studios are rented, accompanied by shared
spaces (kitchens, lounges and sometimes bathrooms) and amenities such as multi-
media rooms, sports facilities, rooftop gardens or climbing walls (Bergan et al.,
2021; Costa & Petrussa, 2019; Druta & Ronald, 2021). Coliving differs from tradi-
tional shared housing in the level of professionalization of service providers, the
type of rental contract, services and amenities, and the lifestyle branding (Druta &
Ronald, 2021).
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Charlotte Casier charlotte.casier@ulb.be ULB CP 130/03, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50, 1050 Brussels,
Belgium
https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2023.2176833
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 11 April 2022
Accepted 31 January
2023
KEYWORDS
coliving; nancialization;
young adults; private
rental sector; exible
housing
2 C. CASIER
In Europe, coliving has spread rapidly since 2013, with the opening of the first
coliving building in London. In 2019, JLL, the American company specializing in
corporate real estate, estimated that 23,150 beds were either built or under devel-
opment across Europe. 60% of these have become operational since 2017 and most
are concentrated in a few cities such as London and Amsterdam (JLL, 2019). This
new sector is attracting attention from the real estate and financial sectors. The
report ‘Emerging Trends in Real Estate: Europe 2020’ by PWC and ULI (2020), a
leading international auditing firm, has ranked coliving as the third most promising
sector for real estate investment in Europe, behind logistics facilities and retirement/
assisted living. The edition that followed described a drop in the coliving sector’s
investment and development score, linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, but reported
at the same time that ‘the inherent flexibility such assets offer could well be in
strong demand during a protracted economic slowdown’ (PWC & ULI, 2021: 30).
Through the study of this emerging sector, I explore the question ‘how are new
residential products created by the financialization process affecting the private rental
sector (PRS)?’ I also document the intra-urban geography of this process. I begin
by presenting a review of the literature in three sub-sections: first, I address coliving
as an adaptation of student accommodation to target young professionals; second,
I analyze the emergence of coliving in the context of financialization of the PRS;
third, I discuss the geography of coliving and its contribution to larger urban trans-
formations. I then describe the case study, Brussels, and the mixed methodology
used to research coliving there. Following this, I present the empirical results in
four sub-sections. The first describes the expansion of coliving in Brussels since
2016. The second documents how coliving operators shape this accommodation to
attract young expatriates. The third sub-section points to the diversity of investors
in the Brussels coliving sector and the determinant role of management rental ser-
vices. In the fourth section, I map the coliving supply in Brussels at the intra-urban
scale and discuss its impact on local housing markets. Finally, I conclude by high-
lighting the original contributions of this work to the study of the financialization
of the PRS and the creation of niche sub-markets.
Adapting a product to reach new customers, investors and geographies
In this paper, I address coliving as an adaptation of purpose-built student accom-
modation (PBSA) to take advantage of socio-demographic shifts and to provide a
profitable hassle-free asset for investors in central urban neighbourhoods. In this
way, real estate players deliberately create a ‘tailor-made’ residential product to
maximize their profit. I also provide results on intra-urban geographies of finan-
cialized niche real estate sectors.
Coliving as an adaptation of student accommodation to enroll young
professionals
First, I address coliving as an adaptation of PBSA to enroll young professionals.
Some scholars have already pointed out this blurring between student residences
HOUSING STUDIES 3
and accommodation for young professionals (Revington, 2022; Smith 2009). Student
residences have been widely studied in various contexts (Hubbard, 2009; Kenna &
Murphy, 2021; Revington & August, 2020; Reynolds, 2020; Sage et al., 2013; Smith,
2009). PBSA offers small private areas (rooms or studios) and shared spaces, includ-
ing facilities such as gyms, libraries, bars or pools. Rental is all-inclusive and accom-
panied by concierge and security services. Literature about recent PBSA developments
shows its contribution to the creation and maintenance of exclusive student com-
munities, redefining student accommodation, as well as student lifestyle and expe-
rience (Kenna & Murphy, 2021).
Research has shown the great diversity of the coliving sector in terms of eco-
nomic and operational models, location and residential form (Costa & Petrussa,
2019; Druta & Ronald, 2021; Martin, 2021). However, this literature points to a
specific combination of common characteristics. First, coliving establishments rely
on the association of small residential units (rooms or studios) and shared spaces
and amenities. Second, rental agreements are individual, shorter and more flexible
than traditional ones (Bergan et al., 2021; Druta & Ronald, 2021). They include a
range of services and utilities for a single fee (e.g. cleaning, social events, bicycle
rental and gym membership). Third, the coliving market is typically priced above
the rest of the rental market (Bergan et al., 2021). Rents per square meter have
been reported to be 30–40% higher than those of a conventional flat (CBRE, 2020).
Finally, coliving companies target young professionals and promise them a ‘com-
munity’ (Bergan et al., 2021, p. 1215). These characteristics, except the last one,
make coliving very similar to the PBSA sector. To attract young professionals into
‘student-style accommodation’ (Harris & Nowicki, 2020, p. 596), coliving operators
have to distinguish their product by promising them a specific ‘experience’. First,
they market them a commodified community, which is moderated through the
application process and community rules. These arrangements also mitigate some
of the privacy concerns associated with shared housing (Bergan et al., 2021, p.
1215). Secondly, coliving operators aim to sell a ‘unique’ lifestyle, though the com-
mon spaces and services are rather similar between companies. Design features,
common spaces with character and events are used to create a brand and a lifestyle
that can be experienced by tenants (Druta et al., 2021). Third, coliving companies
profess to answer the needs of young professionals by providing them with flexible
accommodation, workspaces and devices, and an inspiring professional network
(Bergan et al., 2021).
In this way, coliving takes advantage of the rising demand of young singles for
flexible accommodation in cities. Scholars have demonstrated that young adults are
increasingly being crowded out of the homeownership market by unaffordable prices
(Hoolachan et al., 2017). Demographers have also pointed to the rapid rise in the
number and diversity of people not forming long-term conjugal partnerships. In
major cities, one person households can represent half of the population (Druta
et al., 2021.) Episodes of singlehood are now common and often occur more than
once over the life course (Bergström & Vivier, 2020). Research has shown that these
new singles, urban and young, tend to live in new forms of accommodation, as
shared housing (Druta et al., 2021). Finally, coliving should be analyzed in relation
with the flexibilization of the labour market.
4 C. CASIER
This phenomenon is reflected in the delayed entry into the labour market and
the increase in short-term contracts and periods of unemployment (Arundel, 2017).
Increased professional and student migration, the prevalence of freelance work or
dwelling on the move, digital nomadism, and the importance of internships as a
way of starting a career are also features of this flexibilization (Cuzzocrea & Cairns,
2020; Druta et al., 2021; Grundström, 2021; Meier, 2014; Russel & Findlay, 2012;
Thompson, 2019). These transformations increasingly constrain the residential choices
of young adults, forcing them to rely on short- and medium-term forms of tenure
which they can easily leave to take the next job opportunity elsewhere. If the labour
market does not allow them to settle permanently in one place, they have no alter-
native but to be flexible and mobile (Hoolachan et al., 2017). Particularly, the
conditions of temporality and mobility of high-skilled transnational professionals
shape their particular housing demands. Economic flexibility and travel related to
their jobs determine their preference for sharing accommodation and flexible rental
contracts. They also express requirements for physical and functional comfort of
housing (Maslova, 2022).
In this sense, coliving companies rely on the close relationship that exists between
shared housing and new work conditions, exploiting flexible and often highly mobile
professionals. This connection is reflected in the complementarity between coliving
and coworking in residential products or the flexibility of shared temporary accom-
modation (Druta et al., 2021, p. 1198). Coliving companies often offer business
services such as high-speed Wi-Fi and video meeting rooms to mobile professionals
(Bergan etal., 2021, p. 1214). In a context where economic conditions require strong
professional networks for the precarious creative class, these companies also claim
to offer inspirational sociability to their tenants to counter the potential isolation
and loneliness that can accompany hypermobility (Bergan et al., 2021; Thompson,
2019). For instance, in New York and San Francisco, concentrated creative economy
capital production in a geographically bounded location, high immigration of young
skilled workers, unaffordable housing and a shortage of housing stock have created
a perfect environment for the expansion of the coliving sector (Bergan etal., 2021).
However, the blended nature of the coliving concept as home, workspace and
social network can be adapted depending on if the target audience is entrepreneurs,
‘isolated urbanites,’ or nomadic workers. According to Lee etal. (2019), the branding
as workspace will be less important in coliving that targets ‘isolated urbanites’ living
in cities, for whom professional collaboration is not a major motivating factor (Lee
et al., 2019).
Thus, rather than helping young adults to access affordable independent housing
– as they often contend –, coliving operators normalize the shrinking of living
spaces by extending the student lifestyle into the adult housing market (Harris &
Nowicki, 2020). For example, Uyttebrouck’s empirical research on two large studio
developments with shared spaces and services in Amsterdam has described how
local authorities support these projects to increase the housing stock for young
adults even though these projects limit the amount of housing that is available to
other groups (Uyttebrouck et al., 2020). In sum, ‘co-living is not a solution to
housing affordability, but rather, housing suitability for a cohort of potentially
well-remunerated but precariously employed labour’ (Bergan et al., 2021, p. 1212).
HOUSING STUDIES 5
Coliving as a new investment product in rental property
Second, I analyze the emergence of coliving in the context of the financialization
of the housing. Coliving arises as a product designed to target investors of different
scales, offering them high returns due to the renting of small units and economies
of scale through rental management.
Financialization has been defined by Aalbers (2016, p. 2) as ‘the increasing dom-
inance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements and narratives, at various
scales, resulting in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including finan-
cial institutions), states and households.’ It has become popular in the social sciences
with many scholars addressing the subject in different contexts. Housing has become
a major object of financialization through rising mortgage debt, mortgage securiti-
zation, the financialization of housing companies, but also the growing grip of
finance on the PRS (Aalbers, 2017), on which I will focus my attention in following
sections.
Several authors have noted a strengthening of the PRS (Aalbers et al., 2021;
Beswick, 2016; Hochstenbach et al., 2021; Kemp, 2015; Ronald & Kadi, 2018). The
share of renters is increasing in many countries, as a result of growing demand for
PRS both from investors which increasingly see rental housing ‘as an investment
class, as assets that are typically considered low-risk while delivering a good return
on investment compared to other such assets’ (Aalbers, 2019, p. 381); and from
residents themselves, who have been squeezed out of the homeownership market
by high prices (Hoolachan et al., 2017). This expansion of finance to the rental
market reinforces inequalities and often degrades housing conditions (Fields &
Uffer, 2016).
The financialization of the PRS is interrelated with the development of specific
sub-markets as investment products, such as the PBSA sector. PBSA is particularly
attractive to investors: returns are higher due to the rental of small units, parental
rent guarantors reduce the risk of non-payment and larger portfolios that include
student accommodation are more resilient (Revington & August, 2020; Sanderson
& Ozögul, 2022). In this way, this residential product would not simply emerge
from increasing participation in higher education but also from firms’ intentional
efforts to create ‘new opportunities for profitable investment from ever more niche
real estate sectors’ (Revington & August, 2020, p. 871).
In line with PBSA, coliving appears to be one of several real estate products
combining the low-risk profile of residential property with high returns linked to
a dense occupation of space, divided into several small housing units. The operators
of coliving justify these very small living areas by the provided shared spaces and
services but also the housing shortage and the supposed aspirations of young adults
to live in community (Harris & Nowicki, 2020).
The financialization of the rental sector involves investors of different scales. All
too often, these investors are treated as a homogeneous group, hiding varieties in
terms of spatial scale of operation, size and social composition, investment object
and finance, and investment and social behaviour (Özogul & Tasan-kok, 2020). Some
scholars have documented the increasing involvement of private landlords in PRS
in UK (Ronald & Kadi, 2018), Netherlands (Aalbers et al., 2021; Hochstenbach
6 C. CASIER
et al., 2021) and Canada (Walks & Clifford, 2015). In UK, households with small
portfolios and little experience, rather than professional institutional investors, have
driven increases in rental property ownership (Ronald & Kadi, 2018). In the
Netherlands, properties acquired by individuals as Buy-To-Let (BTL) constitute an
increasing share of purchases in the housing market, especially in large cities and
university towns. These inter-urban disparities highlight how this type of investment
is fueled by demand among specific populations, such as foreign students. Small
dwellings are over-represented in BTL purchases (Aalbers et al., 2021). These land-
lords are mainly middle-aged and relatively affluent households (Ronald & Kadi, 2018).
More spectacular is the expansion of institutional investors into urban rental
markets. Long-term investment strategies are now used by real estate investment
trusts (REITs) and listed funds to release housing into capital accumulation flows
(Christophers, 2021; Wijburg et al., 2018). Nethercote has documented how insti-
tutional investors have entered urban rental housing markets via Build-to-Rent (BtR)
developments whereby ‘institutional investors retain single ownership of large apart-
ment complexes as revenue generating assets, with rental income and capital gains
providing for potentially thin but secure margins’ (Nethercote, 2020, p. 839). BtR
typically involves large, purpose-built rental accommodation whose developers empha-
size professional on-site management, hotel-style amenities and more flexible and
convenient tenancies, including long-term rentals and options to move from one
unit to another within a complex as household needs change (Nethercote, 2020).
Investors of different scales can coexist in the same sub-sector, as for instance
in PBSA. Institutional investors largely turned to PBSA after the Global Financial
Crisis. PBSA specialists, mainly REITs, have accumulated large portfolios and several
of the key players in the European PBSA market are REITs (Sanderson & Ozögul,
2022). In the UK, ‘the developments of BtR has historical lineage in other institu-
tional investor submarkets, including the thriving purpose-built student accommo-
dation sector and the smaller ‘coliving’ subsector’ (Nerthercote, 2020, p. 844).
Otherwise, some companies target individual investors by building and managing
residences for individuals who can buy rooms for rental on the promise of fixed
returns (Hubbard, 2009). These landlords receive the rent as income and any capital
appreciation when the asset is sold (Sanderson & Ozögul, 2022).
Much like residences-services (Trouillard, 2014), PBSA usually involves property
management that relieve investors of the tasks ordinarily related to the rental man-
agement, maximizing the process of intermediation between tenants and landlords
(Hubbard, 2009; Revington & August, 2020). Purchasers are thus encouraged to
assimilate these apartments to traditional financial assets (Trouillard, 2014). In this
paper, I argue that property management is a key feature facilitating the coexistence
of individuals landlords and institutional investors on a same sub-sector, as econo-
mies of scale provided by property management allow individuals to remain com-
petitive with bigger players.
Despite this stimulating theoretical framework, literature remains scarce on the
concrete practices and actors involved in the coliving sector, except for the shea-hausu,
a form of coliving described by Druta and Ronald (2021) in Tokyo. Like in the
Canadian PBSA sector previously described, the development of these shea-hausu
is entirely supply-side or developer-driven and involves real estate owners, developers,
HOUSING STUDIES 7
marketing companies in addition to specific instruments such as short-leases and
small deposits and insurance guarantees. Real estate owners, either individuals or
companies, in possession of unproductive property, rent it to shea-hausu companies,
which refurbish, rent, and manage the property (Druta & Ronald, 2021). Coliving
also relies on the digitalization of housing markets, as online platforms, apps and
marketing portals allow for the recruitment of tenants, while contracting and man-
aging day-to-day activities (Bergan et al., 2021; Druta et al., 2021, p. 1198;
Maalsen, 2020).
Coliving as new geography of PRS nancialization
Finally, I analyzed coliving as a way for investors to enter central urban neighbour-
hoods and older buildings. Until now, literature provides no insights into the
intra-urban geography of coliving and its contribution to large urban transformations.
The spatial patterns of coliving have only been studied at an international scale
(Costa & Petrussa, 2019). I aim to fill this gap by mapping the coliving supply in
Brussels.
To analyze the geography of coliving in Brussels, I will take inspiration from
literature on rental gentrification (August & Walks, 2018; Paccoud, 2017). For
instance, BTL has become a prominent tenure trajectory in gentrifying British
neighbourhoods. This BTL gentrification has occurred in more urban, central, and
disadvantaged places, unattractive to owner occupiers. BTL, from owner-occupier
to rental, creates opportunities for asset appreciation and contributes to long term
trajectories of displacement in surrounding areas. BTL properties are let to wealthier
tenants than the former residents, contributing to the increase of rental yield and
capital value. Here, Paccoud takes inspiration from the concept of the ‘landlord
developer who rents it to tenants after rehabilitation’ identified by N. Smith (1979,
p. 546) as one of the three types of ‘gentrifiers’.
August and Walks (2018) have also shown how financialized landlords, including
those owned or run by private equity funds, financial asset management corporations
and REITs, via investments in multi-family housing in central areas, are leading to
‘gentrification by upgrading.’ Buildings with low rents are being transformed into
luxury rentals for more affluent tenants through interior fit-outs and landscape
upgrades, thus helping to crowd out the original residents.
Following the literature presented above, I aim to document how new residential
products created by the financialization of the PRS enroll both new socio-demographic
groups as residents, and various types of investors. Mapping the intra-urban geog-
raphy of coliving, I highlight how residential products are adapted to enter new
spaces and types of building.
Brussels as case study: rising property prices and high-skilled
international immigration
Brussels is characterized by both demographic dynamics dominated by international
immigration and by a structural shortage of affordable housing. These characteristics
make this small world-city a particularly interesting case study.
8 C. CASIER
Since 2000, the Brussels housing market has been under pressure due to rising
property and rental prices and the lack of affordable accommodation (Dessouroux
et al., 2016). PRS is largely dominant in Brussels: 61% of the dwellings are rented
(census 2011), mostly by the private sector, as social housing only provides 7 dwell-
ings per 100 households (Monitoring des quartiers, 2019). This structural housing
crisis is notably linked to the demographic growth occurring since 2000 and the
international functions of the city.
Indeed, the position of Brussels as an international employment hub, linked to
the presence of EU and NATO institutions on its territory, is determinant in its
housing dynamics. High-skilled international immigration is therefore a major char-
acteristic of Brussels’ demography, as large number of professional migrants are
attracted by the city’s international coordination functions. In 2020, there were at
least 123,500 jobs related to the international sector, mostly highly qualified, account-
ing for 17.6% of jobs in Brussels. These figures have remained stable compared to
2013 (Commissioner.brussels, 2020). Gatti (2009, p. 6) defines these expatriate
workers as ‘a special subgroup of immigrants characterized by a high level of edu-
cation and a relatively high professional status’; they are rather young and often
settle temporarily in Brussels. Among these expatriates, many are trainees, students,
or entry-level workers, who – despite their high level of education – do not nec-
essarily have high incomes yet (Casier & Decroly, 2022). They are particularly
concentrated in neighbourhoods surrounding the European quarter and the Louise
Avenue (Casier, 2021).
These features have stimulated Brussels’ real estate market, boosting production
and residential renovation. It has allowed the transformation of part of the existing
housing stock into an object of investment and creating a high-end – yet limited
– market. The current demographic situation and context of financial investment
are thus favorable to prosperous real estate activity (Dessouroux et al., 2016).
However, Brussels’ real estate prices remain lower than these of other European
capitals such as Paris, London or Amsterdam.
Rising property prices and international immigration make Brussels an ideal
market for the development of coliving. For instance, JLL ranks the city in the
‘Growth’ category from the perspective of the coliving market, on par with Dublin,
Cologne, Oslo or Manchester and ahead of emblematic cities such as Barcelona,
Lisbon, Rotterdam or Madrid (JLL, 2019, p. 3).
Methods
I used quantitative and qualitative methods to document the Brussels coliving sector
between June 2020 and August 2022. As this paper addresses coliving in terms of
the creation of a product, I focused on the actions and interests of operators and
investors. This supply-side approach is commonly used in research about new res-
idential products (for instance: Kenna & Murphy, 2021; Bergan et al., 2021;
Trouillard, 2014).
First, I constructed a novel database of nearly 300 coliving establishments in
Brussels. I identified them from search engines, interviews with professionals and
the scanning of press and social networks. Based on the websites of coliving
HOUSING STUDIES 9
companies or on advertisements posted on social networks, I encoded for each
coliving establishment the operating company, the address, the monthly rent, the
number of rooms and the year of opening. This database provides a nearly exhaus-
tive coverage of coliving in Brussels in August 2022.
Second, between June 2020 and May 2022, I interviewed employees in the four
of the five major coliving companies in Brussels and three smaller ones (Table 1),
together accounting for 75% of the Brussels market. Interviews covered several
topics: the available supply, the profile of the tenants, the economic functioning of
the company, its future prospects, and its relationship with the public authorities.
Interviews were also conducted with five landlords of houses rented as coliving. As
coliving companies did not provide contacts of landlords and no data on them were
accessible, it was particularly difficult to recruit them, which explains the small
number. Interviews were conducted in French and excerpts were translated into
English by me.
Third, I analyzed rental leases and companies public communications (website,
newsletters, social networks). I also collected information from the Belgian real estate
and financial press. I identified 112 articles dating back to 2016 via the Factiva and
Europresse search engines. I recorded them in a database with the article’s references,
the companies mentioned, the topics covered and the main content. I then kept the
file up to date using the Google news alerts. This way I could document the stages
of development of the sector since 2016, the companies’ strategies to attract investors,
and more generally understand the position of this product on the real estate market.
Finally, one of the largest coliving companies in Brussels provided me with the
age, gender, nationality and occupation of its 210 tenants in February 2021.
Exploring the Brussels coliving market
A growing niche sector organized by local specialized operators
Brussels’ coliving sector emerged in 2016 and has been growing rapidly ever since
(Figure 1). On 1st September 2022, there were more than 280 establishments in the
city, offering around 2800 rooms. Most of these establishments are located in ren-
ovated single-family houses, an architectural form typical of the center and the first
urban ring of the city, built between the late 19th and early 20th century (Figure
2). On average, coliving establishments have about ten single rooms, but some have
Table 1. Coliving companies interviewed (data on 1 September 2022). Source: own database.
*opened or under development.
Code
First year of
opening Rooms (n)* Establishments (n)* Property structure
12016 736 52 Property and management
22016 513 64 Only management
32016 ~330 38 Only management
42018 ~280 31 Mixed
52017 22 3Property and management
62019 70 5Property and management
72019 18 2Mixed
Brussels sector ~2800 ~280
10 C. CASIER
up to 20. The Brussels coliving sector’s reliance on renovated small or mid-sized
buildings contrasts with purpose-built forms which dominate in PBSA or BtR,
although this is changing, as described later.
In Brussels, five specialized companies control most of the coliving market, renting
out between 20 and 50 establishments each. On September 1st 2022, they were
responsible for almost 75% of available rooms. The remainder is managed by over
a dozen recently founded firms that manage up to five properties each. With the
exception of two French firms that opened house in Brussels in 2021 and 2022, all
of these companies were founded by Belgian-based entrepreneurs.
Attracting young expatriates by oering housing exibility and community
experiences
Coliving appears to be a product designed to attract young mobile professionals: it
provides them an easy access to housing, a flexible lease and a social network, all
of which suit their unstable career. In return, coliving companies ask higher rents
than in the conventional PRS.
First, coliving provides its tenants a flexible accommodation suited to their unstable
careers. In the Brussels coliving sector, rental agreements are per-individual, shorter
than the traditional PRS, flexible and all-inclusive. The coliving houses are furnished
by the companies, including towels, bed sheets and kitchen utensils. Operators make
the stay of their tenants easier by providing a whole range of services: weekly cleaning,
maintenance, basic groceries (like olive oil, salt and pepper, dish soap etc.), Netflix
subscription and management of their utility bills. According to Company 2, it’s a
hassle-free accommodation for tenants, especially for newcomers to Brussels:
they [tenants] can arrive with two suitcases and everything is there (…) with us you
come and you really don’t do anything. We really take care of everything, from A to
Z. at’s the main advantage.
Like elsewhere, rents are above market: the price for a room in a coliving estab-
lishment opened in 2022 starts on average at €760 (including all charges), which is
equal to the average rent in the Brussels Region1 (Monitoring des quartiers, 2018).
Figure 1. Coliving rooms counted in Brussels on September 28, 2022 according to their year of
opening. The rooms for which the year of opening was unknown (20%) were distributed among
the years according to the total distribution.
HOUSING STUDIES 11
Digital tools also provide young expatriates with easier access to the coliving
market than to the traditional PRS. The rental process is done online: applicants
complete their profile, choose their room and sign their lease contract over the
internet. It is very convenient for people abroad looking for accommodation in
Brussels before arriving. Tenants enter the houses and their rooms with a code or
electronic badge instead of keys. The inventory of fixtures is often done via email
Figure 2. Two coliving establishments in Brussels oering 11 and 13 rooms. They are located in two
adjoining bourgeois houses dating from the end of the 19th century. C. Casier, 25 November 2021.
12 C. CASIER
or a smartphone application. On a day-to-day basis, smartphone applications offer
useful information on the property, a suggestion box, a list of cohabitants and allow
tenants to report a problem. Thanks to these digital tools, companies can increase
their room stock without hiring additional management staff, as the CEO of Company
1 was pleased to report (Trends, 24 October 2019). In this way, digital technology
is part of a logic of cost reduction and therefore an increase in yield, while corre-
sponding to the expectations of customers.
As presented above, coliving accommodation can be framed as an extension of
student accommodation. To distinguish itself from the latter sector and attract young
professionals, the Brussels coliving operators market a specific ‘experience’. By pro-
moting the values of sharing in their websites and social networks, they sell ‘inten-
tional’ communities with ‘like-minded’ people to their tenants. This aspect is
dominant in the branding. For instance, almost all coliving company websites have
a ‘community’ section. One of them claims:
you are not only living in a fully-furnished and well-designed house, you also join a
vivid community of young internationals. You enjoy an exciting coliving experience
with your housemates. Every community creates joyful memories with loads of laughter
and many epic pictures. Share your adventure and make lifelong friends (company 2).
One professional interviewed (company 2) argued to me that the community is
really what makes their accommodation a different ‘product’ from the conventional
rental market:
the aim is really to have an intentional community. It’s not renting a room, it’s really
integrating a community (…) they [the tenants] could have a studio for the same price
but it’s just another product.
This community experience would be rich and open-minded due to the interna-
tional background of the tenants, as an agent from Company 3 – himself living in
a coliving house – explains:
there is an open-mindedness that is much bigger, because you are in contact with
many dierent nationalities. […] It teaches you a lot about other cultures, it’s very
interesting. It also helps you to improve your language skills.
Operators build this community in different ways. First, coliving establishments
offer spaces and facilities for sociability (games room, bar, large dining room, terrace
with barbecue, etc.). Second, operators organize events and activities such as welcome
drinks, brunches, picture contests between houses or yoga sessions in the park.
These moments are relayed on the companies’ social networks as advertising material.
Third, they target a specific socio-demographic group, preserving a kind of ‘entre-soi’
of people sharing the same lifestyle. Finally, social interactions in and between the
establishments of the same operators are also aided by digital tools. For example,
the Company 1 smartphone application provides a Brussels map referencing its
coliving establishments and for each one, the list of tenants, their mean age and
the number of different nationalities. Coliving tenants can chat with each other via
this application. Another company (2) also uses its ‘community app’ to build a
network between its establishments:
HOUSING STUDIES 13
you can now connect, meet and share with other ShareHomers through our Community
App. Organize events, share topics and meet like-minded people during your stay at
ShareHome.
These elements contrast with the marketing of the PBSA operators who promise
above all a safe and comfortable space. In this way, coliving operators claim to
answer the young expatriates presumed needs for social links and community expe-
rience. A professional interviewed (1) clearly expresses this specific target:
our concept is really aimed at young international workers. Simply because the objective
is to oer accommodation in which the tenants will really share moments together,
common spaces, be able to organize events and activities. (…) And so, those who
benet most from this are people who are arriving in Brussels for the rst time,
who do not know many people, who are looking for the social link which is quite
important in our houses.
Unsurprisingly the Brussels coliving sector accommodates a majority of young
European migrants in its establishments, for whom this flexible, all-in and sociable
offer is designed. According to the companies interviewed, 70% of their tenants are
migrants, with a large majority of them European citizens, while European nationals
(excluding Belgians) accounted for only 27% of the Brussels population aged 20–29
in 2017 (Casier, 2019). The company 3 data (Table 2) shows that almost half of
these migrants are French, whereas French citizens represent 9% of the Brussels
population aged 20–29 in 2020 (Casier & Decroly, 2022). However, in interviews,
professionals of coliving companies have pointed out the growing share of Belgians,
often non-Brussels residents, within their establishments. This could result both
from the COVID-19 crisis and the structural need for these companies to attract
more tenants to feed their expansion.
The median age of these tenants is 25 years, with a roughly equal gender split.
The tenants are described as highly skilled. Among the houses managed by Company
3, most of the tenants are workers but final-year students and trainees together
account for about 40% of the residents. The clientele of Company 7 is made up of
‘many expats who work or do an internship at the [European] Commission or who
are French on VIE [Volontariat International en Entreprise] contracts.’ Company 1
claims to ‘target the 22- to 35-year-olds, who are either starting a new job or coming
Table 2. Coliving tenants prole (February 2021). Source: coliving company 3.
French Belgian
Other
EU + citizens
Other
migrants Total
Citizenship
n76 67 58 12 213
Share in total 36 % 31 % 27 % 6 % 100 %
Occupation
Students 22 18 6 4 50
Share in the national group 29 % 27 % 10 % 33 % 23 %
Interns 21 116 139
Share in the national group 28 % 1 % 28 % 8 % 18%
Workers 33 48 36 7124
Share in the national group 43 % 72 % 62 % 58 % 58 %
Demography
Median age (y) 24 26 26 30 25
Female proportion 55 % 48 % 40 % 33 % 47 %
14 C. CASIER
to work in Belgium, or they can be trainees or people who are doing a doctorate
or master’s degree.’
According to the professionals interviewed, tenants tend to stay in an establishment
for about a year; coliving is usually their first form of accommodation in Brussels
and when they leave, it is mainly because they are moving out of the city. In-depth
interviews with coliving tenants would give us a better understanding of the place of
this type of housing in the residential pathways of young expatriates in Brussels.
Making real estate investment protable and easier for investors
To attract capital and develop their rental stocks quickly, Brussels coliving companies
shape coliving as a hassle-free property asset with high returns.
First, the coliving sector offers high returns by dividing a property, typically a
single-family home, into multiple individually rented rooms. It makes it possible to
buy large properties, with relatively low prices per square meter, while renting them
out at the price of small units, where each square meter is valued. For instance,
one landlord earns €3,500 net for his house rented as a coliving instead of €2,500
in a traditional rental:
the return is much higher. Basically, there are 7 bedrooms and yeah, I think we could
have rented for [€]2,500 and we got [€]3,500 instead thanks to coliving. About €500
net per room basically.
In addition, economies of scale also increase returns, despite significant manage-
ment costs. Finally, establishing coliving in renovated housing shortens the length
of time between buying and renting.
Secondly, coliving operators attract investors by offering convenient ways to invest
in the sector. Two modes of funding coexist, enabling both individual landlords and
large funds to invest without having to deal with the rental management.
In the first mode of funding, the companies are merely property managers. After
identifying a house to include in their portfolio, these companies find a private
investor to buy it, which becomes the unique owner. The coliving company then
takes over the renovation and the rental management of the establishment. It can
also take over the management of a house that a private individual already owns
and wishes to rent as shared housing. In return, it charges a percentage of the rents
and an administration fee.
In this way, coliving operators relieve the landlord of all the tasks that property
rental imposes. A coliving company’s website promotes their rental management
services in the ‘Impact Investor Corner’: ‘real estate owners rely on [our company]
for a full end-to-end support in house sharing investing.’ Professional 2 sums up:
‘the comfort we offer to investors is to take care of everything for them.’ According
to her, this arrangement stimulates investment in the coliving sector:
it’s really the management side that interests them [the landlords]. If they had to create
a shared accommodation themselves and take care of the tenants, I don’t think [they
would do it]. Because it’s a lot of work, that’s why we’re a team of six.
HOUSING STUDIES 15
This first mode of funding is close to that of shea-hausu in Tokyo, where firms
take over the management of property. It also shows the central role of rental
management companies in making investment easier for private landlords and
allowing them to benefit from economies of scale.
Individual investors in Brussels coliving are upper class, in line with the research
on private landlordism (Ronald & Kadi, 2018). Company 3 targets ‘the private
investor who has too much work to do and just wants to invest in real estate without
having to worry about anything.’ The profile of these investors is ‘C-level, so it’s
CEOs, CFOs, etc., who are mostly entrepreneurs, have money and don’t have time
to deal with a real estate project at all.’ All landlords interviewed are men, middle-aged
and high earners. They are seduced by the higher returns and the diversification
of their portfolio, as one explained to me:
what attracted us was the diversication and the fact that the return was probably a
bit better than if we had rented ats as they were.
Adopting a second mode of funding, other coliving companies own the houses
rented. To buy them, they mobilize bond investors and bank loans. Since 2019,
some have been raising more substantial funds from large investment funds, such
as AG Real Estate, a Belgian REIT belonging to the international Ageas group, as
well as from family offices, illustrating the contribution of larger investors to the
development of coliving in Brussels. In 2021, Company 1 announced that it had
raised €70 million, enabling it to acquire €200 million worth of real estate in Brussels
and other European capitals (Samain, 2021a, 2021b).
Simultaneously with the opening of houses, these owner companies are now
developing large-scale coliving projects, in converted or new buildings. According
to a professional, the aim is to ‘grow a little faster’ (Company 1). In November
2020, Company 1 announced its acquisition of the upper floors of the ‘Passage du
Nord’, a 19th century-shopping mall in the center of Brussels. The first press releases
described a space of 4000 square metres, divided into four ‘houses’ with a total of
64 rooms. In October 2021, a French company partnered in an office conversion
project in Woluwé-Saint-Lambert. The complex, combining housing, offices and
green spaces will include a coliving residence with 66 rooms divided among seven
large flats, each offering private and common spaces. On the ground floor, ‘a
super-common’ will include a lounge, a shared workspace, a laundry room, a gym,
and a cinema. This type of project results from and is imposed by larger real estate
or financial partners, as Company 1 explained in the press:
buying bigger was a request from our investors at the end of 2019. We have to prove
that we are capable of buying and developing property developments of 5000 to 10,000
square meters (Samain, 2020, my translation).
The partnership with an institutional player will ‘help us find bigger projects’
(Company 1). The conversion of offices in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert is being carried
out by a larger Brussels property development company. Finally, Company 3 has
declared its plan to ‘position itself as a partner in large mixed real estate projects’
(Masquelier, 2021).
16 C. CASIER
A reading of the real estate and financial press confirms the interest of major
players in coliving. For instance, the website of a Belgian bank states that negotiations
are ongoing between different operators and larger developers for larger projects:
the success of co-living has quickly attracted the attention of real estate developers.
Almost all the platforms oering co-living have been contacted to consider a larger
scale development. Besix and AG Real Estate have clearly shown their interest in this
new form of housing and are considering setting up large projects in Brussels in col-
laboration with existing platforms or on their own.
These examples show a consolidation of the coliving sector, originally organized
by small-scale companies, and a reorientation toward purpose-built or conversion
projects. These coliving large-scale projects are even closer to the PBSA develop-
ments or to large BtR developments with hotel-style amenities and more flexible
contracts described by Nethercote (2020) in Seattle. These trends match current
urban developments: as the coliving sector is loosely regulated in Brussels, local
authorities are now trying to limit its hold on traditional houses and support
coliving in reconverted offices, industrial or retail buildings. It is still too early to
evaluate these policies.
Entering old housing and central urban neighbourhoods
The geography of coliving houses shows a strong concentration in the south-east
of Brussels’ first urban ring (Figure 3). These establishments are mainly located
in the municipalities of Ixelles, Brussels-City, Saint-Gilles, Etterbeek and
Figure 3. Geography of coliving establishments in Brussels.
HOUSING STUDIES 17
Schaerbeek, near the European district and Louise Avenue, two areas that attract
expatriates in Brussels (Casier, 2019). It confirms the targeting of young inter-
national workers by coliving companies, which claim to be responding to
their demand:
these are the neighbourhoods closest to the city center, where there are [real estate]
opportunities, where there is the most dynamism, which are the most living, where
there are cafés, restaurants, bars, shops. So these are the ones that our candidates ask
for. (Company 1)
In this way, coliving establishments are doubly concentrated: geographically and
in terms of housing type. Indeed, establishments are predominantly settled in a
particular form of building, namely single-family houses, although larger projects
are under development. This double concentration makes coliving a non-marginal
phenomenon, as it removes a significant number of single-family houses from the
traditional market in the surrounding neighbourhoods. By increasing the expected
rental yields of these houses, coliving contributes to higher purchase prices.
The coliving offer is also gradually spreading to low-income neighbourhoods:
several openings in 2021 and 2022 are located in Saint-Josse or in the west part of
Saint-Gilles which had been spared until now. These developments may indicate
diminishing returns on projects in the eastern part of the first urban ring, making
companies move to cheaper areas in order to maintain yields. For instance, company
3 announced on the radio in August 2021 that it would stop opening houses in
Ixelles, Saint-Gilles and Etterbeek
for the simple reason that the real estate is really too expensive. We would like to
develop these new neighbourhoods, I would say “secondary”, to bring a little bit of
our added value to these neighbourhoods.
Two other companies have also communicated their desire to open houses with
lower rents but ‘for that, we may have to relocate to other less expensive munici-
palities’ (Company 1).
Coliving makes property investment in old housing stock in central urban neigh-
bourhoods easier and more profitable, extending the financialization of housing to
these type of buildings and geographies. Attracting wealthier residents in central
neighbourhoods, coliving developments should be seen as a contribution to rental
gentrification processes as identified by Paccoud (2017) or August & Walks (2018).
Conclusions
Through the study of the Brussels coliving sector, I aimed to answer the question
‘how are new residential products created by the financialization of the PRS?’ Based
on empirical data, the paper illustrated that real estate players deliberately create
‘tailor-made’ residential products to maximize their profits. Coliving is a product
shaped to attract both young professionals in a student-style accommodation and
investors of various scales, while integrating new geographies and housing types
into capital accumulation. Through this sector, the paper also documented the
intra-urban geography of the financialization of the PRS.
18 C. CASIER
First, I confirm that coliving is aimed at a particular market segment consisting
of young workers, illustrating the creation of specific residential products to take
advantage of a particular population group, as shown by Bergan et al. (2021). In
Brussels, these are mainly international workers attracted by city’s global functions.
Their socio-demographic profile, length of stay and flexible housing needs make
them a particularly interesting clientele for the sector. Coliving provides them a
kind of ‘entre-soi’ with like-minded people and an access to upgraded accommo-
dation in sought-after neighbourhoods.
Future research should investigate the population of coliving residents and the
motivations and constraints that lead them into this kind of accommodation and
how it influences their lifestyles and work. First results allow me to formulate the
hypothesis that transformations of the labor market are relevant to understand the
demand formation for coliving. Those interactions between residential patterns of
young adults and flexibilization of the labor market should be further explored.
These questions should also address the diversification of skilled migration, where
the middle classes are increasingly present (Scott, 2019).
Second, the Brussels coliving market illustrates that the financialization of the
PRS relies notably on the creation of new products shaped so that investors can
easily inject their capital into it. In this way, the paper contributes to a fuller com-
prehension of the coliving sector in terms of economic structures and actors. The
analysis of the sector clearly shows that coliving is a financial product: the estab-
lishments are financed by private investors and increasingly by institutional funds;
a high and secure return is promised to them; the involvement of specialized man-
agement companies allows the investors to consider these properties as traditional
financial assets; and coliving makes it possible to increase the rent per square meter
of traditional Brussels family houses.
This paper points to the need and value of taking into account simultaneously
in the analysis the actions of private landlords and larger players in a real estate
sector, which is quite rare in the literature. As shown in the BtR or PBSA literature,
rental management companies play a determinant role in making investment easier.
The Brussels coliving sector demonstrates that it allows individual landlords to
benefit from economies of scale. In this way, they contribute to that coexistence of
players of different scales in the same sub-sector, as individual landlords can remain
competitive with the institutional actors.
Third, the Brussels case study shows that through adapted products, financial-
ization of the PRS can integrate all housing types, and does not only concern
large-scale purpose-built developments. In Brussels, most coliving establishments
remain small-scale projects in renovated existing single-family houses. While these
buildings have not been as affected by the transformation of housing into a
financial asset, their occupation by several solvent professionals makes it possible
to ask for higher rents and increase the return per square meter. The transfor-
mation of these houses into coliving establishments offers capital owners a new
way to enter already densely built-up areas in the first urban ring where little
land is available for large-scale new built projects. In this way, coliving extends
the effects of financialization of housing into the neighbourhoods in which the
establishments are located and contributes to rental gentrification processes. There,
HOUSING STUDIES 19
the sector reinforces the selection processes by increasing real estate prices and
diminishing the housing supply adapted to local demand by the integration of a
greater number of dwellings into the upgraded furnished sector. Such results could
be helpful in the comprehension of spatial patterns of private landlordism or of
other niche financialized sectors like short-rental tourist accommodation.
Note
1. Unfortunately, more detailed data on the rental market is not available for the Brussels
Region.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to J.-M. Decroly, N. Revington and M. Van Criekingen
for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. Critical comments from three anonymous
reviewers also contributed to its improvement. Many thanks to Emory Shaw for his
proofreading.
Errors and omissions remain my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
is work is supported by a fellowship of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientique – FNRS.
Notes on contributor
Charlotte Casier is a PhD student in geography at ULB. Her research interests lie in the
elds of demography and urban studies. Her thesis focuses on the coliving sector in Brussels.
ORCID
Charlotte Casier http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4162-0284
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