New housing habits: Co-Living and Senior-Living Rentals

According to KPMG, the real estate market in Spain marks trends of change in the traditional demand for housing towards a new model designed based on the new requirements of people such as “senior living”, due to the growth of life expectancy, or “co-living” as an extension of the coworking model in the housing market, demanded mostly by foreigners.

Main takeaways from the article:

• Traditional housing for sale has registered record figures in 2022. However, in the last quarters of 2022 there was already a certain slowdown. For this reason, the number of housing transactions in 2023 could slow down significantly and some people who do not see a favorable time to buy their first home may opt for renting, which may put further upward pressure on rental prices.
  
  
• In recent years, people's housing habits and needs have taken a 180º turn. Access to traditional housing has become increasingly difficult for the population, where life expectancy and therefore the number of elderly people continues to increase. This is coupled with geographic mobility, driven by hybrid work models and other social changes, which has resulted in new housing needs. This change in the trend of the traditional real estate model has as a consequence new requirement from the sector towards the administrations, related to providing greater flexibility to urban planning regulations.
  
  
• With these circumstances, new formulas appear in the real estate market where alternative assets are positioned as a focus for investors: the 'coliving' and 'senior living' as typologies still incipient. 
  
  
• Coliving is mainly aimed at professionals, usually foreigners or people who live outside their city of origin and are looking for temporary accommodation.
  
  
• Senior living, on the other hand, is more oriented to non-dependent seniors and has three main forms: 1) 'Senior cohousing', developed by people with common interests usually in a cooperative regime. 2) 'Senior coliving' in urban areas and 3) Senior resort in coastal areas with a large influx of foreigners.