This edition:
Habyt exits APAC to Mitsubishi Estate
Hmlet returns under Yoan Kamalski
Patron Capital tests the first €400M European coliving exit
Argis opens 179 studios inside Madrid’s old Metro HQ
LiveStay breaks ground on Adelaide’s first hybrid hotel-coliving tower
Connecticut’s Senate passes a “Golden Girls” coliving bill
Nigeria gets its first structured coliving platform
and everything else about coliving from the last fortnight.
Everything Coliving is the world’s only full-stack coliving agency and knowledge platform, offering growth marketing, custom software, advisory, media & PR, and global research for 60+ coliving operators across 14+ countries.
In Case You Missed It
PadSplit, Shawnee, and 4.1 Million Australians (Apr 13): In the last edition, we walked through PadSplit’s ORIX financing, a federal appeals court upholding Shawnee’s coliving ban, and 4.1 million Australians sharing homes to survive the cost-of-living crisis. Read →
We Built BookMyColiving (Mar 9), the industry’s first free discovery platform. 200+ cities, 70+ countries. 75 operators signed up in the first 45 days. If you’re not on it yet, you’re leaving leads on the table. Read →
Inside Spain’s Flex Living Boom (Podcast S2 Ep2): Why €17B is chasing the “Florida of Europe” and why Madrid is winning while Barcelona is finding its way out of the conversation. Listen →
Habyt Sells APAC to Mitsubishi Estate, And Hmlet Comes Back from the Dead
On April 28, the coliving M&A landscape shifted in a way I genuinely did not see coming.
Habyt sold its entire Asia Pacific business, roughly 1,000 units across Singapore and Hong Kong, to Mitsubishi Estate Co., one of Japan’s largest real estate groups. The transaction effectively reverses the 2022 Habyt-Hmlet merger that was the biggest cross-border coliving deal of its time. The Hmlet brand is back. And Yoan Kamalski, who originally founded Hmlet, is returning as APAC CEO.
If you add up what Mitsubishi Estate now controls in the region, Hmlet Japan (1,609 units), Blueground Japan (245 keys), and the acquired Habyt APAC book (~1,061 units), you get roughly 2,900+ operating coliving units across Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, all under one Japanese-balance-sheet roof. That is, by a comfortable margin, the largest institutional coliving platform in APAC today. (Urban Living News · EdgeProp)
Why this matters?
Habyt is signalling an asset-light strategy in APAC. Operating coliving inside a megalopolis like Tokyo or Singapore requires a kind of local fluency that a Berlin-headquartered platform is always going to struggle to provide.
Japanese institutional capital is now actively underwriting coliving operations, not just buying buildings. That’s a big deal. Mitsubishi Estate doesn’t dabble.
The “founder comes back” narrative is genuinely unusual. Yoan built Hmlet, sold it into the merger, and is now back running the unit Mitsubishi just bought. Watch his next 12 months very closely.
If you operate in APAC, this is a wake-up call: institutional consolidators are not waiting on the sidelines anymore. They’re picking up running businesses.
Patron Capital Tests the First €400M European Coliving Exit
For years, the question hanging over European coliving has been, can anyone actually sell one of these platforms? Patron Capital is about to give us an answer.
The firm has put Vandor, its 1,400-bed Iberian coliving SOCIMI, on the market for around €400M. (Green Street News) The portfolio spans Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Bilbao. This is the first time a European coliving platform of this scale has been formally tested in the market.
Why this matters?
Whatever Vandor sells for becomes the comp. Cap rates, price per bed, EBITDA multiples, every Spanish coliving valuation conversation in the next 24 months will reference this trade.
The buyer pool tells us everything. Is it a hospitality REIT? A private-equity flex-living roll-up? A Japanese balance sheet (sound familiar)? Each answer points to a different future for the asset class.
If it doesn’t trade at a good clearing price, that becomes the story too. The market will adjust expectations accordingly.
For operators thinking about exits, even three or five years from now, start mapping comps now. We track these in our Coliving M&A Marketplace and our Global Coliving Report.
Madrid Turns the Old Metro HQ Into 179 Coliving Studios
This one made me smile.
On April 23, Argis opened a €39M flex-living complex inside the former Metro de Madrid HQ near Retiro Park. 11,800 sq m. 179 studios. Pool. Gym. Coworking. Mini-market. Built into a building that, for decades, was an office complex nobody knew what to do with. (Idealista)
Argis has three more Madrid flex-living schemes in pipeline, a combined 1,119 units. That’s not a pilot. That’s a thesis.
And the thesis is the one we have been writing about for two years: office-to-coliving is not a slide deck idea anymore. In Madrid, it is shipping.
Bloomberg’s piece a few days later (April 27) made the macro picture explicit: Madrid is racing to add supply; Barcelona is racing to restrict it. (Bloomberg) Barcelona’s Housing Commissioner Joan Ramon Riera is publicly saying room rentals and short-term contracts will no longer be supported. Madrid’s mayor is cutting taxes on flex-living conversions. Same country. Same housing crisis. Opposite policy responses.
I keep telling operators the same thing: the regulatory environment in 2026 is no longer a national-level question. It’s a city-level question. Two cities in the same country can have completely opposite rules. Underwrite at the city level, or you’ll get burned.
In the same week, Vita Group signed its second Madrid flex-living JV with Metrovacesa, 519 rooms at Oria Innovation Campus, and a €73M Cain International construction loan, completing in 2027. (Metrovacesa) Vita’s UK PBSA roots are now firmly planted in Spanish flex-living soil.
If you are evaluating Spanish market entry, our Coliving Readiness Index and Property Conversion Assessment are the exact tools we use internally.
Australia Quietly Becomes the Most Interesting Coliving Market on Earth
Two stories in three days, on opposite sides of the country.
Adelaide: On April 22-23, LiveStay (the new umbrella for Veriu Group) broke ground on a 17-story hybrid tower at 124 Wakefield Street. 120 Veriu apartment-hotel keys + 120 UKO coliving units inside the same building. Opening 2028. (Urban Living News)
Sydney: Apt.Residential launched Apt.Broadway in Ultimo, its second Sydney coliving asset, with two adjacent Mountain Street BTR developments also coming. (BTR News Australia)
Add these to a broader Australian context: national coliving supply has crossed 10,000 units; Sydney now holds a 90%+ share with ~1,639 operating units; and UKO’s Newtown Village landmark is now formally on the market (Knight Frank), the first major Sydney coliving asset trade and a benchmark cap-rate event for the country.
The 4.1 million Australians sharing homes for affordability that we covered in the last edition? Institutional capital saw the same data point. It is moving fast.
The hybrid-format question, “Should I build hotel keys + coliving units in the same asset?” is the most interesting product question of the next 24 months. LiveStay is a live experiment. If you want to map the unit economics, our ROI Calculator handles hybrid scenarios.
Everything Else Coliving
The deals, projects, regulatory moves, and ecosystem shifts that didn’t get a deep dive but absolutely belong on your radar this fortnight.
UK Pipeline
Margate Football Club: 59-bed coliving + new south end terrace. Co-living cross-subsidising stadium redevelopment is a UK first. (Isle of Thanet News)
Ashton-under-Lyne empty warehouse coliving conversion. Greater Manchester coliving spreading into Tameside for the first time. (Not Really Here Media)
Bristol Yara Capital: 275-unit Trinity Street scheme consultation closed April 23. The early test for Bristol’s emerging coliving Supplementary Planning Document. (Bristol World)
Folk Co-living lands at Brent Cross Town. Halcyon + DTZ Investors + Folk operator. 300+ units in London’s biggest masterplan-led coliving anchor of the spring. (News on the Block)
ARK Living to open Shoreditch coliving this summer. (Urban Living News)
Hines makes its first UK BTR move. Forward-funding Olympian’s all-electric, geothermal-powered Pottery Lane scheme in Newcastle, 519 units across two phases, HSBC green loan. Hines was always going to enter UK living. Now they have. (Urban Living News)
Africa Gets Its First Structured Coliving Platform
BienCasa launched Flatmate publicly on April 30 across five Nigerian cities: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, and Enugu. Integrated matching + financial infrastructure. First-ever structured Nigerian shared-housing platform. If you wanted a real-world test case for Africa-scale coliving, this is it. (TechCabal)
Spain: Barcelona’s Sant Agustí Saga Gets Real
The Catalan government has opened administrative proceedings against New Amsterdam Developers at the Sant Agustí block in Gràcia. Inspections suggest the sum of room rents exceeds Catalonia’s neighborhood price caps. Potential fines: €90,000 per unit × 23 units. (Russpain · Ara.cat)
This is the first enforcement test of Catalonia’s December 2025 law extending rent caps to per-room and temporary contracts. Every Spanish coliving operator is watching this case.
Smart Buildings Become Table Stakes
Spike partnered with Niche Living + OOHPod in Ireland for integrated resident engagement and parcel management at Niche, Ireland’s first purpose-built coliving operator. (Urban Living News)
This is now the bar. If your coliving asset is competing for institutional capital, the resident-tech stack is no longer optional.
US Capital Keeps Moving
PadSplit expanded into four new markets (Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Sacramento, CA; and Nashville, TN) on the back of its new ORIX debt facility. PadSplit now operates 32,000+ rooms across 40+ markets. (PRWeb)
The Connecticut Senate passed the “Golden Girls” shared-housing bill 29-7 on April 17. SB 339 would let owner-occupants rent up to three bedrooms by right with no local zoning approval. (CT Public) (Spoiler for the next edition: this story takes a turn in May.)
Everything Coliving, The Agency Stack
I’ve had a few emails recently asking what “Everything Coliving” actually does beyond the newsletter. So here it is, in plain language.
We are the world’s only full-stack coliving agency and knowledge platform. We work with 60+ operators across 14+ countries. What we actually deliver:
Growth Marketing, SEO, paid, content, and lead-gen funnels built specifically for coliving’s lead-to-tour-to-tenant cycle.
Custom Software & Tech, From BookMyColiving (free forever listing) to bespoke property tech for operators who need more than a generic PMS.
Advisory, market entry, business plan, financial modeling, exit prep. Whether you’re a single-asset operator or a fund building a portfolio.
Media & PR, The newsletter you’re reading is part of it. So is the podcast, the Global Coliving Report, and the Live Research dataset.
If any of that sounds like what you need
The first one is genuinely no-strings. Worst case, you walk away with a clearer picture of your market.
BookMyColiving, Free Forever. Seriously.
Quick update from the 45-day mark: 75 operators have signed up, 27 properties were added, 100 tenants registered, 2,000+ searches were conducted, and 18,000 visitors came. (My LinkedIn post →)
Numbers are still small. I am honest about that. But the intention is unchanged: a forever-free platform for shared-living operators worldwide. Zero marketing spend. Zero commissions. Pure SEO + word of mouth. If you operate a coliving space and you are not yet listed:
It takes 5 minutes.
It is free, today and forever.
You get direct tenant connections, no commission, no middleman
If you operate at scale and want an API integration to push your inventory directly, hit reply. We’re building the API with a few large operators right now.
Coming Up: Events
SIMA 2026, Madrid, May 20-23. Europe’s largest dedicated living conference. First-time dedicated Flex Living Space. 21,000 visitors, 350 exhibitors, 200 speakers. We have free SIMA passes for podcast subscribers; listen and grab one here.
National Co-Living Conference, Denver, June 5-6. The premier US gathering. Details →
Coliving Conference 2026: 4th edition of the global flagship. Details →
What I’m Thinking About This Week
There is a pattern emerging that I want to name out loud.
In 2014, when I started in coliving, the people running the industry were entrepreneurs, ex-hospitality folks, and a handful of architects who were obsessed with community. The capital was venture. The conversations were about “redefining home.”
In 2026, the people buying the industry are Mitsubishi Estate, ORIX USA, Cain International, Hines, DTZ Investors, Patron Capital, KKR, Pension Insurance Corporation, and the UK National Housing Bank. The capital is institutional. The conversations are about cap rates, exit comps, regulatory readiness, and operational scale.
This is not bad. It is, actually, exactly what we said we wanted in 2018. Institutional acceptance was the milestone everyone was chasing. We just have to be honest about what it means: the people who built this industry will not all survive the institutionalization of it. Common is gone. Habyt is exiting APAC. UKO’s Newtown is on the market. Patron is testing the European exit door.
The operators who thrive in the next phase will do three things:
Run the asset like a real business, with clean financials, real NOI, and defensible cost of customer acquisition.
Pick the right city, not the right country. The Madrid vs. Barcelona divergence is the playbook for the rest of the world.
Build distribution they own. Direct lead pipes. Owned audience. A reason customers come back without paying a marketplace 20%
I have spent 12 years reinventing my own role in this industry: customer, operator, freelancer, advisor, operator again, marketplace builder, and agency owner. The people who get stuck are the ones who decided once who they were and stopped updating themselves. Don’t be that person.
Hit reply and tell me: what’s the one thing you’re reinventing in your operation this quarter? I read every reply. And the most interesting ones I’ll feature (anonymously, if you prefer) in the next edition.
Onwards and upwards.
Mayank Pokharna
Everything Coliving · BookMyColiving · LinkedIn · Podcast
PS, The next edition (Friday) covers the Investec Future Living 4 report (40% of investors raising coliving allocation), Vonder’s Dubai launch, Wee Hur’s $50M Sydney bet, what just happened to Connecticut’s Golden Girls bill in the House, GMP’s Truliving move in Madrid, and Stanza Living’s down round. If you’re not subscribed, fix that here.
