And as the Baby Boomers enter retirement, this has led to there being a greater proportion of elderly people compared to younger generations. In fact, in the biggest 50 European cities, more than 50% of households are now one-person. This, along with the different lifestyles and working styles favoured by younger professionals, is of course what has been shaping the current residential market. But it has also fueled the stereotype that Generations Y and Z are just renters who don’t invest in owning their own homes. Nevertheless, he also highlighted the fact that at the moment: “Countries with a higher proportion of rental apartments also have a higher transaction activity,” But the question for market players, is whether these younger generations will move out of their rented apartments once they eventually have kids and go to live in the suburbs?

For the Baby Boomers, on the other hand, once their offspring have flown the nest, they can end up living in large houses with too many rooms.

Are we experienced?

The second speaker of the conference was Gui Perdrix, the president of global coliving association CoLiv and the co-founder of coliving incubator Art of Co, and, as such, he began by defining exactly what coliving is: “More than two unrelated people living in the same space and sharing common resources, for instance, a kitchen, a living room.” Examples include types of student and senior accommodation and standard flat-sharing. Typically, the rent and bills are paid in one all-inclusive payment. Also, this format is characterised by its flexibility, as contracts can be signed and terminated quickly, sometimes under a subscription model. But one key feature of coliving is that there should be a strong community focus together with an ‘urban lifestyle’ – the ‘housing as experience’ concept. But as Gui Perdrix admitted, while this is true in theory, it is sometimes not the case in practice.

Another interesting feature about the current market, is that it seems to be dividing into asset-light and asset-heavy, due to the fact that more and more traditional developers are entering the game. While the asset-light approach is exemplified by the tendency of some of these developers to turn to specialist white-label operators rather than managing the properties themselves. The growth of some of the players on the market has also been staggering during its short history. For example, LA-based Node started out in 2018 by offering shared living in houses, and by 2020 was providing boutique coliving apartments; but now, in 2024, it is developing 707 apartments in two huge projects in Madrid. Such examples abound and demonstrate just how mature the market is becoming. French company Cowool, which was founded in 2022, is another. It specialises in hybrid formats, combining hotels, coworking and coliving. It started out by converting old hotels into such facilities and now has four standing locations and four in the pipeline.

The meaning of living

The final presentation was given by Andrei Martin, a partner at London-based studio PLP Architecture and a founding partner of PLP Labs, which specialise in researching into and designing large scale urban ecosystems – or what are known as micro-cities – and are mainly involved in the refurbishment and repositioning of buildings within this context. The question he posed is that if it is in the human condition to yearn for meaning, have the meanings of our dwellings been lost due to the mass-production of housing? To show how such meaning can be rediscovered, he detailed a few notable micro-cultural residences, such as Wembley Park in London, which even attracted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to move there, as well as East Village in the same city, a community centred around the visual arts and handicrafts, or a recent student housing scheme in the City of London with its own Migrant Museum that tells the background stories of many of its inhabitants.

His final theme was multigenerational living. He noted that the concept promotes the creation of spaces that support intergenerational interaction and community building. Multigenerational housing can offer flexible spatial solutions, common areas for meetings and activities, and adapted services that facilitate daily life and strengthen social bonds. Adaptive space design supports a diversity of housing functions, responding to the changing needs of residents at different stages of life.

Over to the panel

His final theme was multigenerational living. This was also discussed a length in the panel discussion that followed, moderated by Dorota Wysokińska-Kuzdra, a senior partner at Colliers and a executive committee member of ULI Poland. The panelists included Andrei Martin and Thomas Beyerle, along with Marta Karteczka, the head of serviced living of NREP in Poland, and Marcin Wyszomierski, the CEO of senior homes specialist Proaltum, who stressed that it wasn’t just demographic change that is driving the coliving market but also population growth. Prices are only going to keep going up as the population of the world expands.