HIPPITY HOP LIVING
Have Wi-Fi, will travel seems to be the motto of the day anymore. Our ubiquitous, powerful technology has enabled increasingly greater freedoms in what we do for a living and how we do it. This also translates to more options in where you lay your head at night. A new company called Common is capitalizing on these trends by creating flexible co-living arrangements catering to the urbanite Internet-enabled worker as reported by Kyle Chayka (“Putting the App in Apartment” Bloomberg Businessweek , 11/16/15–11/22/15, pp. 33–34):
“ Common is part of a trend called co-living, a Silicon Valley spin on the hippie collectives from California’s past. It’s selling a lifestyle enabled by the Internet: Communes for digital nomads. ‘You can stay in one place and move anytime to another place. It’s like having an apartment everywhere,’ says Kirill Sopot, co-founder of San Francisco’s Coliving Club, a chain of four houses. ” (p. 34)
Using online flexible contracts, renters within the building can change from one bedroom to another or even upgrade to full apartments as needed. Commons is not the only company to satisfy this niche. Other companies include WeWork, Nest Copenhagen, Caravanserai, Quantierra, Embassy Network, and Roomi, to name a few.
Real estate has always been an exciting market-driven venture. It appears that the real estate market is becoming ever more flexible in what works, in more ways than one.
