Coliving Statistics 2026: Every Number Sourced

Three rules govern this page. First, every statistic carries a named source inline — the organisation, the publication, and the year — so you never have to guess where a number came from. Second, every source appears in the reference list at the bottom with a direct link, and we check those links each quarter. Third, when a figure cannot be attributed, it is excluded, even when it is widely repeated and probably roughly right. 'Probably roughly right' is how bad data becomes industry consensus.

We also preserve disagreement rather than smoothing it over. Coliving lacks a settled definition — some counts include only large-scale purpose-built shared living, others fold in HMOs, flex-living and serviced apartments — so two credible research houses can publish different totals for the same market in the same year and both be internally consistent. Where that happens below, you get both numbers and the definitional reason for the gap. A single confident figure would be tidier and less true.

$16.05 billion — the projected size of the global co-living market by 2030, according to Grand View Research's market sizing report. That projection implies rapid but not implausible growth from today's base, and it is one of the few global figures published with a stated methodology behind it.

13.5% — the compound annual growth rate Grand View Research forecasts for the global co-living market from 2025 to 2030. For context, that is faster than most established residential asset classes but in line with other emerging operational living sectors at a similar stage of institutional adoption.

€62.2 billion — total investment into EMEA living sectors (multifamily, student housing, co-living and related residential) in 2025, per JLL's EMEA Living Market Perspectives. Co-living is a small slice of that total, but it sits inside a capital pool that has become one of Europe's largest real-estate allocations — which is why the sector's pipeline keeps growing even in tighter credit conditions.

Treat any single 'global coliving market size' figure with suspicion, including this one. Definitions differ, private operators dominate and disclosure is thin. What the sourced figures above establish is direction and order of magnitude: a market in the low-to-mid tens of billions by 2030, growing at low-double-digit rates, inside a much larger institutional living-sector allocation.

~9,000 — operational co-living units in the UK entering 2025, according to Savills' Spotlight on UK Co-Living. That is the most current supply count from a major research house, and it makes the UK one of Europe's largest co-living markets by operational stock.

3,300 — co-living units delivered in the UK in 2024 alone, per the same Savills research — the sector's biggest delivery year to date, with roughly 3,600 further units expected to complete in 2025.

7,540 — operational co-living homes counted by Knight Frank in its UK Co-Living Report 2024, representing five-fold growth since 2019. Note the gap against Savills' ~9,000: the two firms count at different dates and draw the definitional boundary of 'co-living' differently. We show both because that gap is real information about how unsettled sector definitions still are — not an error to be averaged away.

5x — the growth in operational UK co-living stock between 2019 and 2024, per Knight Frank. Whatever baseline you prefer, the direction is not in dispute: UK co-living has moved from experiment to asset class inside five years.

87% — the year-on-year increase in UK co-living planning submissions in 2024, with around 9,000 units submitted for planning in that year alone, according to Savills. Planning applications are the earliest reliable signal of developer conviction, and this is the sharpest acceleration the sector has recorded.

14,000 — consented co-living units across 53 schemes in the UK pipeline, per Savills' 2025 spotlight, with more than 17,000 further units in application or pre-planning stages behind them. Consented stock matters more than aspiration: these are schemes that have already cleared the planning hurdle.

20,000+ — the number of operational UK co-living beds Knight Frank projects by 2027, roughly a trebling of its 2024 count. Even if delivery slips — and in development it usually does — the consented pipeline above makes substantial growth close to arithmetic.

45% — the share of institutional investors who say they intend to enter the UK co-living sector within the next four years, per Knight Frank's 2024 investor survey. Stated intent is softer evidence than committed capital, but at this scale it explains why the planning pipeline keeps filling.

4.25% — the prime net initial yield for London co-living in Knight Frank's Prime Yield Guide, November 2025. Prime regional co-living sits at 5.00% in the same guide.

3.90% — the prime yield for London Zone 1 build-to-rent in the same November 2025 Knight Frank guide. The 35-basis-point spread between prime BTR and prime London co-living is the market's current price on co-living's shorter operating track record and thinner transactional evidence — a spread that has been compressing as the sector matures.

For operators and investors, the practical reading: co-living is now priced by the same yield-guide infrastructure as BTR and student housing, at a modest premium. That is what institutional acceptance looks like in valuation terms — boring, comparable, and quotable.

Aggregate funding totals for coliving are mostly unsourceable, so we track named, verifiable transactions instead. Three reference deals anchor the European institutional record.

€1 billion — the facility Ares Management committed to French co-living operator Colonies in May 2022 to build a Western European co-living apartment portfolio, as reported by CoStar News. It remains the largest single capital commitment to a European co-living platform on public record.

€450 million — the co-living joint venture formed by Bouygues Immobilier and Ares, as reported by Urban Living News: developer-plus-capital-partner, the JV structure through which most institutional co-living stock now gets built.

~€300 million — Greystar's acquisition of a roughly 2,000-bed Spanish flex-living portfolio from Bain Capital, announced January 2025 via Greystar's newsroom. Notable as a portfolio trade between institutions — evidence of a functioning secondary market, which is what nervous first-time investors most want to see.

8.4 million — people living alone in the UK in 2024, up from 7.6 million in 2014, per the ONS Families and Households bulletin. One-person households now account for 29.5% of the UK's 28.6 million households — nearly one in three.

4.7 million — households in England's private rented sector in 2023-24, or 19% of all households, per the English Housing Survey. The PRS has roughly held that share for a decade after growing sharply through the 2010s — a structurally large renter population from which co-living draws its residents.

The demand logic is in the intersection: millions of people renting privately, a rising share of them alone, in cities where a self-contained one-bed is the most expensive way to house one person. Co-living's pitch — a private room plus shared amenity at a bundled, all-inclusive price — is aimed squarely at that overlap. The supply figures earlier in this page are the market's bet that the overlap keeps growing.

3.83 million — UK adults experiencing chronic loneliness (feeling lonely 'often or always'), which is 7.1% of the adult population, per the Campaign to End Loneliness's analysis of ONS data. In 2022, 49.6% of UK adults — roughly 26 million people — reported feeling lonely at least occasionally.

2x — young adults aged 16 to 29 are around twice as likely to report chronic loneliness as people over 70, per the same Campaign to End Loneliness analysis. That inversion of the stereotype matters for co-living specifically, because 20s-and-30s renters are the sector's core demographic. Community is not a marketing garnish on the product; for a measurable share of residents it is the product.

28% — the share of working adults in Great Britain who were hybrid working in autumn 2024, per the ONS article 'Who are the hybrid workers?'. Hybrid working reshapes what renters need from home: more daytime hours in the building, more value on workspace, reliable internet and communal areas — the exact amenity set co-living bundles in.

35% vs 24% — working parents were more likely to hybrid work than working non-parents in the same ONS analysis. The relevance is indirect but real: hybrid patterns are settling in as durable labour-market structure rather than pandemic residue, which supports the long-hold investment theses behind the capital figures above.

19% — the share of recent US renters who skipped in-person tours entirely and rented without one, per Zillow's Consumer Housing Trends Report 2024. For operators filling rooms from international and relocating demand, the listing is the viewing.

25% — recent renters who rated a 3D or virtual tour 'essential' when choosing a rental in the same Zillow 2024 report — and 79% said at least one digital feature (photos, floor plans, virtual tours) was essential to their decision. Digital presentation is no longer a differentiator; its absence is a filter that removes you.

71% — the share of consumers who regularly read online reviews for local businesses, per BrightLocal's 2025 Local Consumer Review Survey, with Google the dominant platform. A co-living building's review profile compounds room by room, renewal by renewal — it is the cheapest durable marketing asset an operator owns.

172,703 — renters surveyed across 4,220 communities in the 2024 NMHC/Grace Hill Renter Preferences Survey, the largest study of its kind. Among its findings: flexible rent payment options matter to 66% of renters — a preference co-living's all-inclusive, subscription-style billing happens to serve well.

$3,872 — the average cost of a single resident turnover in 2023, per a Zego property-management survey reported by Multifamily Dive. Void days, turn costs, marketing and re-letting effort stack up fast — which is why retention, not acquisition, is where well-run co-living buildings win their margin.

39.2% — annual turnover among onsite maintenance technicians, per National Apartment Association data cited in the same Multifamily Dive report. Staff churn is the hidden operations statistic: every departing technician takes building-specific knowledge with them, and shared buildings punish slow maintenance harder than single-family stock does.

44% — the share of dissatisfied renters who said maintenance issues took weeks or months to resolve when they expected hours or days, in AppFolio's 2025 survey of 2,002 US renters. In a shared building one broken washing machine is twenty unhappy residents, not one — the expectation gap this statistic measures is where co-living reviews are won and lost.

These are US multifamily benchmarks, not co-living-specific figures — co-living-specific operating data at this quality does not yet exist in public. That gap is precisely what our forthcoming operator survey is designed to close.

You are welcome — encouraged — to cite this page. If you use a figure you found here, attribute it to its original source (listed below) and link to StartColiving as where you found it compiled and verified. A simple credit like 'via StartColiving's Coliving Statistics' with a link to this page is exactly right.

What we promise in return: this page is updated quarterly. We re-check every link, replace superseded reports with their newer editions, and retire figures whose sources go dark. Statistics older than three years get flagged or removed rather than left to fossilise.

And the honest disclosure, repeated once more because it matters: everything above is third-party research whose sourcing we have verified — not our own primary data. When our operator survey publishes, its numbers will appear here under the same rules as everyone else's: named source, stated method, working link. If you spot an error or a broken link before we do, tell us — the correction will carry your credit.