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Coliving trend on the rise for working millennials
For those who opt to live in apartments, finding the right roommates to share the cost and space with may be a thing of the past
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For those who opt to live in apartments, finding the right roommates to share the cost and space with may be a thing of the past.
New coliving services offered by tech start-ups are providing options for not only the places to live but also roommates
Rachel Theos, who works in digital marketing for a private company, used to live in a rooming house in Grogol, West
Jakarta, before sharing a unit in Taman Anggrek with two complete strangers.
She landed the unit, along with the roommates, when she ran into a coliving platform called Yukstay, which offers a coliving scheme by providing fully furnished apartments that may already have other tenants. She pays Rp 2.6 million (US$185.92) a month for a room, which she said was over her budget but worth it considering the amenities she got.
The thought of sharing the space with two other women deterred her at first, but she said that after several months of living together, it was going well so far. The platform also conducts background checks in pairing tenants, which she found helpful.
“My housemates are nice, and I get to make new friends with them. We don’t really meet often because of our different work hours, but when we do, we can chat for a long time,” the 24-year-old said.
Khansa Nabilah Agisinfia also joined the coliving bandwagon in the past month. She has been living at a coliving space in the form of a landed house in Karawaci, Tangerang, Banten. The house is managed by a coliving platform called Rukita.
She found out about the space as she was looking for a place to live near her new office in Karawaci. After considering several options, she chose a rooming house living arrangement at a big house that accommodates 25 people.
The monthly fee of Rp 2.6 million includes access to a communal living room, a kitchen, laundry services and housekeeping.
Started in February this year, Rukita aims to not only provide coliving spaces but also help homeowners manage their property, cofounder Sarah Soewatdy said.
She is upbeat that the service would gain followers amid tight competition with conventional rooming houses or apartments.
“Our market is professional millennials, which is quite big. We see that in Jakarta, there are a lot of young professionals who want to have a quality life along with their jobs,” Sarah said.
Applicants for Rukita only need to sign up and fill a form through rukita.co, after which Rukita will conduct a simple background check of the applicant’s place of work and social media account.
While homeowners tend to ask for at least six months’ rent in advance, coliving spaces such as Rukita and Yukstay allow users to pay a monthly rent instead.
Yukstay cofounder Agus Rusli said the start-up, started in March 2018, had looked at other coliving start-ups in other countries as examples, such as China and India.
“One company in China already has 1.2 million tenants. The way I see it, if it could succeed there, it could also be a success here as well. We’re already one and a half years in and it works,” he said.
Besides providing places to live for young professionals, Yukstay also aims to help property owners, especially those who own houses with two and three bedrooms. He argued that listing the property for rent would only reach a limited market, such as expatriates or large families that could afford them.
With the coliving scheme, individual tenants could share the rent, which would be beneficial for both tenants and owners, Agus said.
He claimed that Yukstay already had 200 apartments turned into coliving spaces, with rent starting at Rp 1.5 million, excluding water and electricity bills.
Applicants can register at yukstay.com or through the Yukstay app available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. He said that tenants would need to stay for at least three months at Yukstay, and prior to living in a unit, Yukstay would do a simple background check on them.
Research from Colliers International Indonesia showed that out of 201,817 apartment units in Jakarta, only 69.8 percent are occupied, leaving 60,949 units unattended.
