This week I read through more than 130 Google Alerts and close to 400 links on coliving, threw out the room listings, the adverts and the job posts, and was left with roughly 70 stories that matter, which is a decent week by any measure, but what stands out to me is less the volume and more the direction, because three very different markets moved in three very different ways at exactly the same moment.
London is writing coliving into its planning system as a recognised product with its own fast track.
Singapore’s largest listed operator is selling buildings to fund a 10,000-room ambition.
Spain is having a loud public argument about whether coliving is a housing solution or a rent-extraction model with a nicer logo.
I have spent more than a decade inside this industry, and the pattern I keep seeing is that regulation and capital almost always arrive together.
London gives coliving a fast track, and the pipeline shows up the same week
The draft London Plan, published on 16 July and open for consultation until 15 October, sets out a new Fast Track route for coliving, where a scheme that delivers conventional affordable housing on site at the relevant threshold skips the detailed viability fight, while schemes that prefer to pay into affordable housing stay on the viability-tested route. The policy also writes down the operating basics that separate real coliving from rooms-in-a-tower: a single management structure, communal space designed for people to actually meet, locations close to transport, and a proper management plan covering maintenance, security and safety.
The pipeline responded immediately.
Arada London, the UK arm of the UAE developer, submitted its first coliving application at 101 Newington in Elephant and Castle, with PLP Architecture designing a mixed-use scheme that reports put at around 720 co-living homes next to a 404-room hotel and workspace.
Lambeth councillors unanimously approved a 134-room scheme from Espalier Property Ventures in Oval on a site that locals knew mainly for fly-tipping.
Harrow has a 10-story, 104-room scheme recommended for approval.
Romford has a plan to turn the old ATIK nightclub site on South Street into nearly 300 homes, and a Deptford scheme on Evelyn Street switched from standard flats to coliving.
Outside London, Secure Trust Bank wrote its first coliving loan, a £4.5 million land bridge on a 266-bed scheme in Reading
Cartwright Pickard reports that The Hive, Grantside’s 100-home scheme in Sheffield, is close to completion.
What I take from this is simple.
When a city defines the management standard in policy, it is no longer debating whether coliving exists; it is debating how much of it gets built and on what terms, and that is the moment operators who already run proper community and maintenance systems pull ahead of developers who only have a floor plan.
Our Coliving Jurisdictions tracker already covers London and is the quickest way to compare these Fast Track mechanics with nine other cities, and if you are a landlord sitting on an office or hotel in London, our office-to-coliving conversion guide is the place to start the maths.
Spain: coliving is on trial in public
Spain gave me the most uncomfortable reading of the week, and I mean that as a compliment to the reporting.
In Barcelona, the Tenants’ Union announced a day of mobilisations.
Ara ran the story of Rosario Castillo, the last original resident of an Eixample block that is now full of coliving rooms.
El País walked through the Catalan decree measures that are already in force, which put controls on temporary and room-by-room rentals offered by companies that split flats and relet them under the coliving label.
On LaSexta, Diego Ramírez of Restty went on El Intermedio and, to the presenter’s surprise, called colivings one of the least ethical models in real estate.
At the same time, the other Spain kept building something entirely different.
The Ministry of Defence published prices and conditions for its military coliving pilot with private bathrooms in every room.
The Xunta de Galicia showcased the Fixar program in the village of Muimenta as a tool to attract entrepreneurs to rural Galicia.
Canal Extremadura featured a coliving and coworking project in the Jerte Valley.
Lima created a transactions division with a portfolio of more than €200 million focused on coliving, student residences and senior living.
This is exactly why I hold the line on definitions. Splitting an existing flat into rooms and charging more per square metre is room letting; it is not coliving, and when the industry lets that model borrow the name, it is the purpose-built and the rural regeneration operators who end up paying the regulatory bill. I have watched the same conflation damage India, and Spain is now living through its version of it. Our 12 Pillars of Coliving framework exists for precisely this conversation, and it is the document I hand to any Spanish operator who needs to explain the difference to a city council.
Singapore: the market grows while the biggest operator sells
Singapore Business Review reports that the coliving sector has attracted $1.4 billion amid an asset conversion boom, with room inventory up 17% between 2023 and 2025 and occupancy holding at 85 to 95% despite the new supply.
In the same week, Coliwoo agreed to sell two River Valley Road properties, 50 rooms in total, to Qing Feng Construction for S$45.8 million with a three-year leaseback, a day after completing its S$134 million Midtown disposal. Mingtiandi notes that the price came in about 15% below the guide from the March portfolio marketing, and Coliwoo expects a S$4.3 million non-cash fair value loss, while CEO Kelvin Lim frames the sale as balance-sheet work towards 10,000 rooms by 2030. The shophouse market is pricing coliving income into listings, with five freehold Owen Road shophouses near Farrer Park listed at S$33 million and adjoining Geylang shophouses at S$16.9 million, both partly tenanted to coliving residents.
I read this as an operator choosing to become asset-light at a discount rather than stay asset-heavy at a premium, which is a trade I made myself in a much smaller way when I ran SimplyGuest on master leases across 17 locations without owning a single building. The real question for Singapore is not demand, because demand in coliving has never been the failure point; the question is who owns the walls and who owns the residents, and this week Coliwoo told us clearly which one it values more. If you want to see how Singapore compares with the other markets we track, the City Benchmarks and the State of Coliving 2026 hub carry the numbers.
PadSplit goes to San Francisco, New York and Chicago
PadSplit announced its entry into San Francisco, New York and Chicago, adding three of the most expensive US housing markets to more than 40 existing ones, with over 39,000 furnished rooms on the platform, more than 90,000 people housed to date and a median resident income of $32,500. The San Francisco launch is backed by the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, and CEO Atticus LeBlanc describes room rentals as the only attainable housing option for many workers.
PadSplit is doing important housing work, and I respect the numbers, but it is house sharing, not coliving, and TNW calling it a coliving startup in the headline is exactly the kind of conflation that confuses investors and city planners. The model is a weekly room rental with no credit check and owner protection products, and that is a valid answer to the affordability crisis that sits underneath the US and Australian archetype; it just is not the same product as a managed community with programming and a single operator accountable for the experience.
Also, Black Enterprise covered older adults turning to shared housing to manage costs, and Yield PRO reported that Post Chicago, a 421-bed furnished building, is now leasing, which tells me the US is producing all three formats at once and needs better language to tell them apart.
India: capital arrives, and so does the backlash
Pune developer Naiknavare Developers announced plans to invest more than ₹125 crore in co-living as part of a target of 20% revenue growth by FY27, which is another established developer moving into the category rather than a venture-funded startup. In Hyderabad, HMTV reported local backlash against hostels in Adibatla, the tech hub opposite TCS, that operate under the coliving name with complaints about anti-social activity.
Both stories are the same story told from opposite ends. A developer building purpose-built stock with a defined operating model is the India I want to see more of, and a PG relabelled as coliving with no management standard is the India that gives the category a bad name. PG is not coliving, and every time the press uses the two words interchangeably, the purpose-built operators lose a little more trust with residents and with regulators. If you are an Indian developer evaluating the category, the Coliving Academy is free and covers the operating side, which is where most new entrants underestimate the work.
Australia: Perth swaps, Sydney adds
Singapore’s Meadpoint replaced its Perth coliving plan with a build-to-rent tower, while Marprop plans a two-tower coliving scheme on Hay Street in West Perth. In Sydney, a revised SSD in Waterloo now delivers 580 apartments, including 74 coliving rooms; a new coliving DA landed in Kirrawee, and in Newcastle, Living secured approval for a suburban coliving and student scheme in Jesmond. The South China Morning Post quoted market voices on how Sydney’s co-living segment is now focused on refurbishing hotels and offices.
Australia remains the market where coliving most clearly answers a cost-of-living and essential-worker problem, and the swap in Perth shows how sensitive a scheme is to financing and planning settings rather than to demand. Our Colivings for Sale and Property Opportunities boards are where I am pointing Australian owners who want to test the conversion route before committing to a full DA.
Everything Else Coliving: from around the world
Malta. The government, the Foundation for Affordable Housing and the Archdiocese of Malta are converting the Kirkop convent into the country’s first affordable co-living residence, a €1.6 million project for 15 residents with a night shelter for the elderly and a public clinic on site.
GCC. Cavendish Maxwell names student housing, senior living and co-living as the biggest real estate opportunities across the Gulf for the next decade, which fits the workforce housing upgrade story I keep telling about the region far better than the branded residence story most reports lead with.
Taiwan. The Ministry of Health and Welfare is preparing a co-living long-term care pilot across 10 locations, adapted from the Japanese model for a super-aged society.
Indonesia. Fortune Indonesia reports a 40% rise in owner interest in converting land and buildings to co-living in Jakarta during 2026, and Rukita launched a premium Menteng product from Rp 4 million a month.
Japan. Colive Fukuoka 2026 opened on 30 September and runs to 10 October for digital nomads across Kyushu, and it is listed on our Events and Conferences page.
Philippines. Bayfront CoLive+ in Cebu marked its first year with 60 rooms.
Norway. Finansavisen profiled the founder who sold Bo Coliving for NOK 1.8 billion and is now consolidating the storage sector.
France and Germany. Groupe Pichet plans five All Suites openings in 2026 across hotel residences, student housing and coliving, and Monocle featured The Embassies in Hamburg as an intergenerational co-living and hospitality concept.
UK opinion. Moorfield Group’s Charles Ferguson-Davie argued in Property Week that coliving clears the viability hurdle, which is a useful counterweight to the Exeter Observer story about the council’s Harlequins site going up for sale after six years without a proper co-living policy. Further north, the Sunderland Echo reported that an 18-studio co-living plan on Wearside faces rejection over concerns about cramming too many residents onto the site.
From the feeds: what people said this week on LinkedIn, X, Reddit and Instagram
The news pages tell you what got approved and who sold what, but the social feeds tell you how people actually feel about it, and this week the conversation on X and LinkedIn ran far ahead of the press in the United States.
Housing lawyer Sam Hooper posted a thread on the Bowery lodging houses of Lower Manhattan, where a bed once cost a dime a night, arguing that the loss of roughly 200,000 such rooms fed homelessness and that legalising modern coliving restores the bottom rung of the housing ladder. Aaron Lubeck made the same point more bluntly, saying cities banned the format on purpose for decades and then wondered why the survivors became housing of last resort. Hooper also wrote on LinkedIn that he met his wife in a coliving building in London, the first marriage to come out of that building, which is the kind of story that does more for the category than any market report I publish.
In India, Colive ran a coordinated launch for Colive Jasper in Bellandur, Bengaluru, a 600-plus bed property with live food counters, a gym, a café, a co-working lounge and gaming zones, pushed through five Instagram reels and influencer posts in a single week, and Youthville opened a new premium address in Yerawada, Pune. On the same day, a resident on r/india asked for help with a rent and deposit dispute with a large coliving brand, saying the deposit agreed with the salesperson before move-in did not match what followed, and that gap between the sales promise and the contract is the single most common complaint I see from Indian coliving residents, year after year, because growth teams move faster than operations teams.
The investor side of social media was louder than usual. US real estate educator Pace Morby told his Facebook audience that co-living deals replace your entire income, with an average house cash-flowing $1,500 a month, and the Coliving: Profit with Purpose newsletter on Substack walked through loan products built specifically for co-living investors. I have nothing against room-by-room investing, but a cash-flow number without vacancy, turnover and management cost is a marketing number, and our free ROI Calculator and Vacancy Cost Calculator exist so that anyone tempted by those reels runs the real maths first.
In Singapore, AsiaOne and DollarsAndSense both pushed explainers on whether coliving beats a condo room once furnishing is counted, which tells me the consumer there is now comparison shopping, and that is a sign of a maturing market.
On the industry calendar, the Coliving Awards announced the 2026 Student Coliving finalists and Jo Winchester confirmed she is speaking at Coliving Conference 2026 on 14 October, and both sit on our Events and Conferences page.
See you next Friday.
Mayank
If you run a coliving and you are not yet listed, the Operator Directory and BookMyColiving are both free, and if you are wrestling with spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups across more than one building, JumboTiger builds a dedicated PMS instance around how you already operate.
Sources
UK and Ireland
Draft London Plan sets out new Fast Track route for co-living, BTR News
London co-living could gain faster planning route, BDC Magazine
Arada London plans for first co-living scheme, Property Week
Arada London Elephant and Castle co-living and hotel scheme, CoStar
Arada submits plans for its first co-living development, Estates Gazette
STB £4.5m land bridge for 266-bed co-living, Global Student Living
Sheffield 100-home co-living nears completion, Cartwright Pickard
Moorfield’s Charles Ferguson-Davie on co-living viability, Property Week
Europe
APAC
India
North America
Middle East
Australia
Meadpoint replaces Perth co-living with BTR, Green Street News
Kirrawee co-living DA, St George and Sutherland Shire Leader
Social and newsletters
Sam Hooper, “I met my wife in a co-living building in London”, LinkedIn
Financing advice for co-living investors, Coliving: Profit with Purpose
Jo Winchester speaking at Coliving Conference 2026, LinkedIn
Sunderland 18-studio co-living plan, Sunderland Echo on Facebook
Corrections policy: if any figure or attribution here is wrong, email me and it will be corrected in the next edition with your name on it.
Mayank Pokharna, Everything Coliving. mayank@everythingcoliving.com