Co-living making the headlines

Co-living is making the headlines across the hospitality and real estate industry, and it is certainly having an affect on the way players in the serviced apartment sector are thinking.

The first major operator to throw its hat in to the co-living ring has been Ascott, with its lyf brand. Its first property, lyf Funan, which opened in September, is located in Singapore’s central business district and has 412 rooms across 279 apartments. Ascott describes it as the largest co-living property in south-east Asia. Room sizes vary from 18-square-metre studios to 70- square-metre four-bedroom apartments.

And the company has announced plans for seven more lyf properties – two more properties in Singapore and one each in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Cebu, Fukuoka and Shanghai.

What differentiates lyf from most other co-living concepts is its minimum stay of just one night, as opposed to one or even three months for other players. This will obviously have implications for operating and distribution costs but parent company CapitaLand is aiming for lyf to account for around 10 per cent of Ascott’s overall portfolio in the medium term so it is serious in its intentions to take a big slice of the co-living pie.