While coworking has taken off, coliving has struggled to gain steam.
Part of this is venture capital and investment funds have been hard to come by for those trying to build shared living space businesses.
This appears to be changing.
The coliving company Common recently announced raising $40 million in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners.
Common currently has 14 shared living sites and over 400 members. They plan to use the new money to fund expansion.
Other coliving companies raising money over the last year include Starcity, Roomi and Bedly.
And, of course, coworking giant WeWork continues to invest in WeLive, although they appear to be expanding this business at a slower rate than they originally planned.
The picture below (click to enlarge) is from their website and shows some of the features and benefits of coliving.
The trends driving the coliving are similar to those driving coworking. Rental space is expensive and hard to find in many cities, people are seeking community and want a greater degree of housing flexibility.
Euromonitor points to these trends as some the reasons they list coliving on their Top 10 Global Consumer Trends for 2018 list.
Despite coliving gaining some momentum, it's not clear to us it will become a major industry like coworking has. Housing is a much different and more complex market.
But we will continue tracking coliving to see.
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