Almost every industry is fighting an everyday battle for survival against COVID. We have seen a lot of transitions in the working practices to accommodate the new normal that COVID has brought forth us. Safety measures haven never been taken into more account before today.
It may seem counter-intuitive but shared living concepts could provide safe harbor. Our homes and common working places are two of the pivotal areas to look into, vis-à-vis safety and social distancing. This puts a question mark on the survival of Co-living-the today’s way of tenant centric renting practice.
But looking at the overview of the situation and future prospects it is suffice to say that Co-living is here to stay even post COVID. Let’s look at the reasons why:
- India is a $50-billion housing market, including a large portion of migrants- 15 million students and 40 million professionals. There is more connectivity than ever among farthest corners of the country and people no longer shy away from migrating to great lengths for their studies and jobs. All this creates an all-time increasing demand of beds which is still unmet, thus, providing a huge opportunity to the companies and start-ups in the line of providing co-living and shared-working rentals.
- With the situation of current liquidity crunch and credit tightening, people, especially those who have just ventured into their respective professions, will opt for shared rental accommodations rather than renting an entire apartment to themselves.
- Migrants want to keep up with their jobs and studies but obviously not at the cost of their safety. A shift has been observed in the Google searches regarding rental homes from “cheaper accommodations” to “safer accommodations”. Traditional rental platforms like PGs and Hostels are a travesty to portray the norms required to comply with safety measures against COVID. Co-living platforms providing safer and sanitized apartments are the obvious choice today.
Moreover, today the tenant can’t afford to live around an overwhelming crowd which is the biggest issue with PGs and Hostels. Co-living apartments helps us comply with social distancing even at home.
- With the real estate industry plunging down, many developers are collaborating with co-living platforms to transform their properties to rentals. This opens up more beds in a safer and more advanced properties for the migrants.
- Most of the companies today are going for “Work-From-Home”. Many, like TATA Consultancy Services (TCS), have even announced to make a majority portion of their staff work from home permanently by the coming years. While people are scooped in their homes, many still prefer to stay near their workplace. Moreover, they want accommodations which can comply with the infrastructural needs (like 24/7 Wi-Fi) of their operations. Such advanced properties are provided by co-living platforms which understand the needs of a working professional.
- Traditional rental practices are very cumbersome. It requires a lot of unnecessary inconveniences regarding browsing of properties, dealing with brokers, finding roommates, buying/renting furniture in case of unfurnished or semi-furnished properties, etc. To top it off, most of these things have to be managed physically, which is exactly the kind of inconvenience everyone wants to avoid right now.
Co-living companies provide a solution to all the rentals problems on a single platform. Its digitized services make It safer and convenient to avoid physical contact as much as possible.
COVID has been in our lives for months now and it is here to stay for more. But we are not here to put a stop at our daily lives and thus, are adjusting our lifestyles in accordance to that. Safety measures are required on every part of the way and having a safe accommodation is the biggest of them all. While traditional rentals cannot comply with today’s need of safety, the new way of co-living comes into play rendering its services while giving top priority to their tenants and employees’ safety.
