Co-Living Goes Mainstream in Market-Rate Apartments

A three-bedroom suite at ARC at Old Colony in downtown Chicago — formerly the historic Old Colony building — which CA Ventures completely renovated and transformed into an amenity-rich rental building for students and young professionals.

CHICAGO—Luxury rental buildings have become some of the hottest properties in the nation’s urban cores, but many of the millennials that could make up a good portion of the renters may feel priced out of this housing. Some operators have gotten creative, and decided to encourage young renters to share apartments by signing leases for individual bedrooms, rather than for whole units, and continue the co-living arrangements they probably had during college.

“We believe that they have already accepted that model as students, and this has helped us stabilize properties faster,” JJ Smith, chief operating officer at CA Ventures, tells GlobeSt.com. “While co-living is a newer strategy for market-rate communities, it’s a model we’ve been using for more than a decade in our off-campus student housing developments.”