Urban Campus fue mencionado en Diario Siglo XXI en un nuevo artículo que destaca las diferencias principales entre Coliving vs pisos compartidos, dos conceptos de alquiler que son confundidos frecuentemente.

Haz click aquí para leer el artículo completo en español.

 

English version

Coliving offers people a comfortable place to stay and create a social life with other users with similar interests. With a global expansion, this new residential model differentiates itself from flat-sharing because it offers the possibility of sharing common spaces while allowing users to enjoy their own privacy, living in an apartment, bedroom or studio with a private bathroom.

THE PRIVACY AND COMFORT OF A PRIVATE BEDROOM, STUDIO OR APARTMENT GENERATES INTEREST AROUND COLIVING

This type of service is characterised because tenants share the whole building and its common areas like gyms, coworking spaces, terraces, movie areas, living rooms, kitchens and other spaces while keeping their private space, always with a private bathroom.

This concept, is managed by  Urban Campus in Spain, a leading company within the Coliving real estate market that is often confused with traditional flat-sharing, although these are two different options.

In flat-sharing, residents interact, on many occasions, in the same bedroom and often share a bathroom. Generally speaking, these are old flats that have been reconditioned to fit leasing purposes. Nevertheless, they do not have a functional distribution of the space, nor offer comfort to the tenant, something that is indeed perceived in Coliving.

For professionals, looking for a place to live can become a tedious and discouraging task as they may need to share a bedroom or flat with strangers, opposite personalities or who are simply living completely different moments in their life. With the arrival of Urban Campus Coliving, this process is carried out easily online.

 

COLIVING SPACES ARE DEVELOPED IN THE BEST NEIGHBOURHOODS TO GUARANTEE SAFETY AND ACCESSIBILITY

Urban Campus selects its Coliving spaces in the best-located neighbourhoods, guaranteeing safety and accessibility to the whole city. Tenants who will live in the space are carefully selected, ensuring a fit with the rest of the Coliving’s residents and offer the best experience living in a like-minded community of professionals with similar needs and interests.

In the type of contract and booking process, we can find another big difference between Coliving and flat-sharing.

While Coliving tries to simplify the entire booking and leasing process, flat-sharing tend to overcomplicate the tenants’ experience with endless requirements that landlords demand before agreeing to sign the leasing contract. They also usually ask for excessively high deposits that serve as a guarantee, while in many cases also adding an agency fee.

On the other hand, Coliving presents a different scope that makes this process way simpler. At Urban Campus, the whole leasing process, from the booking to the contract’s signing is as flexible as it gets, as the minimum stay duration is one month and is done online through the company’s user-friendly booking platform. Here, all the administrative details are clearly shown in a transparent manner.

This residential concept is inspired by a harmonious distribution of the building and private spaces, to foster social interaction and maximise common areas. Coliving provides all the necessary equipment to move in and start living, even bed linens and towels if required.

All of these advantages offered by Coliving compared to the flat-sharing model, have made Coliving a new tendency when it comes to leasing a new living space to begin a new life concept.

“Hazte Ecoun programa de Antena 3 TV, que busca las opciones residenciales más «eco-friendly» ,vino a visitar nuestro Urban Campus Mellado Madrid Coliving.

Querían descubrir, como esta nueva forma de vida, contribuye a crear un estilo de vida eco-friendly, permitiendo ahorrar energía, mientras se comparte casa con una comunidad de profesionales con gustos similares.

Puedes ver el vídeo completo, dónde explicamos, las medidas que tomamos para ahorrar energía, agua… en un entorno diseñado para crear la mejor experiencia para nuestros colivers.

Urban Campus mencionado como uno de los primeros operadores de Coliving en España en el periódico «Expansión».

Puedes leer el artículo completo en Español o seguir leyendo en inglés.

THIS IS WHAT THE FIRST ‘COLIVING’ PROJECT LOOKS LIKE IN SPAIN

Renting a room or studio with cleaning and maintenance included and access to common areas, gym, movie theaters, cafeteria or workspaces: ‘coliving’ takes off in Spain.

Coliving, a model that allows like-minded people to coexist within the same comunidad, offering F&B, WIFI, cleaning or maintenance services, takes off in Spain and does so thanks to operators such as Urban Campus, DoveVivo, Habyt, Homiii, Starcity, The Student Hotel, and Inedit.

In between student residences, hotels, and rental apartments, coliving offers the possibility of renting a room, in most cases with a private bathroom and kitchen, but also the usage of the building’s common spaces.  These common spaces are shared with other tenants with similar lifestyles and include work areas, a gym, a library, terraces, or even a laundry room. This formula was born in Silicon Valley, United States, and has already spread to several European cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, Manchester, Dublin, or Berlin. In Spain, it is still a very incipient phenomenon. According to JLL estimations, Madrid and Barcelona add up to more than 1,200 operational beds under the coliving model. Although focused on these large cities, operators are looking to other Spanish locations to expand their portfolios such as Seville, Valencia, San Sebastián, or Malaga. ?We are already seeing a growing investment appetite for this type of asset in the market, which is inspired by elements of the hotel, multi-family sector or as a link between the student residence and the habitual family home, but with a more professional approach ?, Explains Juan Manuel Pardo, director of Coliving at JLL Spain.

EVOLUTION

• Madrid and Barcelona now have more than 1,200 operational beds.
• Urban Campus, Habyt, DoveVivo, Starcity, The Student Hotel, Inedit, and Homiii are some of the operators present in Spain.
• Investors look for opportunities in this growing business.

OPERATORS

One of the most active operators in our country has been the French company Urban Campus. The group, founded by John van Oost and Maxime Armand, has five coliving. y coworking spaces in Madrid and plans to open 30 residential spaces in the next five years, in the main European cities, ten of them in Spain. Specifically, they want to have more than 2,500 residential units in Spain by 2023.

The Italian group DoveVivo, for its part, landed in Spain last year after the purchase of Oh My Place! and now manages a coliving space on Calle San Lorenzo in Madrid with 44 rooms, although its objective is to continue growing in Spain.

Habyt, founded in Berlin in 2017, has spaces in Madrid and Barcelona, ??while The Student Hotel, with 16 centers in Europe, has two hotels in Barcelona for students and professionals in the education sector and plans to open in Madrid in autumn 2021 and in San Sebastián in 2022, in addition to the third center in Barcelona also next year. Homiii, the commercial brand of the Excem “Socimi”, buy flats in the best areas of the cities, renovate them and equip them with WiFi and Netflix in Madrid, while Inèdit has managed several centers in Barcelona for a decade.

Starcity, with presence in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley, which arrived in Spain through Barcelona Homes in 2020 and other operators such as Sun and Co in Jávea, The Hug, in Fuerteventura or Nine Coliving in Tenerife.

JLL foresees an expansion of the offer of beds in the upcoming years throughout the country of Spain and state that more and more international operators see an opportunity in the Spanish market due to its potential for travel.

OPPORTUNITIES

?The current situation of coliving in Spain is marked by a regulatory complexity that makes it difficult for public administrations to qualify land use appropriately,? explains Pardo. In this sense, the lack of clear regulations in Spain makes it difficult to start new projects and clashes with the specific coliving regulations that the US has or the progress in the regulatory environment of cities such as London or Amsterdam. Coliving has adapted to the Covid, like other sectors, with the development of wellness programs, stricter cleaning protocols, and social distancing. According to JLL, in the current situation, coliving offers an opportunity for new revenue streams for the hotel sector, heavily penalized by Covid, given the similarity between the services and operations that both businesses have.

Urban Campus is one of the most important ‘coliving’ operators in Spain. The company manages two spaces in Malasaña and Mellado, in the center of Madrid, with a total of 120 beds. They include studios or apartments with an en-suite bathroom, which can be rented from one month on, and access to ‘coworking’ spaces, a gym, terraces with barbecues, relaxation areas, and movie theaters.

Maxime presentó el proyecto de Urban Campus en la conferencia Maison&Objet, donde explicó los retos de crear espacios flexibles para vivir, trabajar y disfrutar. También habló del impacto en la modularidad del mobiliario y de cómo ampliar el uso del espacio a lo largo del día, en esta conferencia centrada en el diseño, el estilo de vida y la arquitectura

 

THE WORK! CONFERENCES – Nouveaux modes de travail, Nouveaux objets ? de MAISON&OBJET en Vimeo.

Compartió la charla con Mathilde Maître (responsable de diseño de Fabernovel), Pauline Deltour (diseñadora) y Hélène Aguilar (fundadora de «Où est le beau»). Se mencionaron algunas conclusiones fructíferas y puntos interesantes como la flexibilidad, la comodidad y la practicidad que necesitan los espacios hoy en día.

John van Oost participated to a discussion panel on the digital transformation of the real estate industry and the emergence of new space usages such as co-working and co-living.
The conference was organized by the alumni association of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.
With more than 300 participants, the event demonstrated the significant interest in these topics which are at the core of what Urban Campus does.