Urban Campus set to expand in Madrid with 300 new beds in 2021

The French Coliving operator plans to open up three spaces in the Spanish capital within the next year and establish themselves in cities such as Valencia and Málaga.

EjePrime spoke to the CEO of the company, John Van Oost, about Urban Campus’s plans to expand in Madrid. The company will open up three new spaces next year, adding 300 beds to its Madrid portfolio.

Urban Campus seeks to settle in secondary cities such as Valencia or Malaga

In addition to expanding its presence in Madrid, where it already has two coliving spaces, the company plans to expand throughout Spain, and open up two new coliving spaces in Valencia and Malaga next year. 

The French company has an expansion plan to develop coliving spaces in Spain that will add around 2,000 beds to its portfolio. The CEO has ensured that they have institutional investors who are showing significant interest in the Spanish market. 

Before the outbreak of the pandemic in March, the two centers in Madrid registered an occupancy of 98.5%, but in June only 50% of the units were occupied. “Many of our tenants were from Latin America, the United States, Canada, or other European Union states. A lot of them returned home during the first wave,” explains the CEO.

Currently, the occupancy of its spaces is 98.5%

During the summer the occupancy reached 60%. By September, occupancy was again at nearly full capacity, with 98% of units rented. “During confinement, we organized many activities through social media networks“ Van Oost continued, who himself passed the first wave in one of the centers in Madrid. 

The company also incorporates co-working spaces within its coliving centers, “we already believed it was necessary before, but Covid-19 has shown the need to have a functional workspace at home” adds the CEO. 

Currently, the company has two flexible coworking spaces in Madrid. Urban Campus is committed to including these types of spaces in future coliving projects that are large enough to accommodate a dedicated coworking space. However, for the moment, it does not foresee opening new, and exclusively, coworking spaces in Spain.

You can find the original article “Urban Campus set to expand in Madrid with 300 new beds in 2021” in Spanish, here.

Urban Campus leading Coliving in Spain

Madrid is the European city with the fewest operative beds in coliving spaces behind London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, and Vienna, according to the study “Europe Co-Living: Key Trends and Key” by CBRE.

Urban Campus is the company with more operative beds and we intend to manage more than 2,500 residential units in the region by 2023 on behalf of leading institutional investors.

Companies, such as The Student Hotel, DoveVivo S.p.A., and Homiii, are other players, in this sector in Spain, regardless of the obstacles found in the Spanish country, according to Ejeprime.

Read the Full article “Urban Campus is leading the Coliving sector in Spain, according to CBRE and Ejeprime” here

Our Head of Operations – Iberia Ana Martínez de Lizarrondo Asurmendi participated in the Webinar “The day after: Working spaces of the future” organized by PayFit España, in the context of “The day after” sessions.

Together with Sergi Tarragona Fenosa and Eleonora Cantini, she discussed how the working and living spaces of the future will look like, and answered the following questions:

 

• Do you think that the lockdown we have experienced is causing long-lasting changes in the way companies need workspaces?
• What value proposition have you launched to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in this new context?
• How do you envision the future of working and living spaces in a couple of years?

Interested? Watch the full 45mn webinar here.