Co-Working: The Future Accommodations of Choice for Millennial

The things that millennial strive for are significantly different from previous generations, and planning for a future where millennial become the predominant demographic in the workforce is a concern that organisations face. As the time comes closer for when they take that mantle, they have made changes to the way we approach work and life, what was looked upon as generational quirks, and have steadily become norms that we accept.

Co-working has changed the outlook of offices and empowered people allowing better control of their time and resources to balance work and life. Sentiments that co-working, as we call it now, will be the default workspace in the near future. This idea permeates through to how we will approach living and housing, where co-living could be the preferred means in which millennial choose to live.

At first glance, co-living addresses one of the main key points that millennial face — the ability to buy their own homes.

Being in long-term debt is a big issue that millennial have to contend with. Millennial owe a record amount of debt and find it harder to have the financial means and leverage to afford big-ticket purchases.

The issue of tight finances is compounded by student debt loans that Bloomberg cites as a major barrier to home ownership and disproportionately lower earnings in comparison to previous generations.

A shift in the focus of millennial plays an important part in the change of attitudes that stems from a different hierarchy of needs, valuing experiences over possessions. This results in the idea of having a place to stay, which does not directly equate to home ownership.

Following the change of attitudes towards experiences, a staggering 88 per cent of millennial preferred collaboration as opposed to competition, citing friendships and meaningful relationships as a driving factor in taking on and staying at a job.

Looking at those statistics, it comes as no surprise that the sharing economy has found such success, a study by PWC gives insight to the disruptions that different industries have faced, changing the way we view ownership and the challenges that goods and service providers have to face in an increasingly competitive space.

The sharing economy has been tried and tested through the co-working and hospitality spaces, putting that aside from the fact that millennial are open to places with reasonable rent, and co-living becomes the next extension to the model.

No matter what the setup — from one that scales from a simple co-working space with a bed thrown in, to larger, more elaborate spaces — the attraction in the co-living spaces comes in the opportunities to create better relationships with people who share their same values, while evoking the benefits of having a community for emotional and social support.

Being in a space where the relationships made can spawn into professional collaborations and vice versa, the draws of co-living for millennial hold many advantages that go beyond attractive asking prices.

These sentiments along with the trends and lifestyles that millennial have adopted should give companies serious considerations that co-living will be the future setup of living that millennial will eagerly adopt. Knowing what co-living spaces will need to separate them from the rest will shape the next push, as we begin to see more sophisticated, and thought out iterations of this mode of living.