How Co-Living Can Help You Get Started Earlier, Faster, & Better!

How Co-Living Can Help You Get Started Earlier, Faster, & Better!

Grant ShipmanPro Member
Rental Property Investor · Estes Park, CO · Member since 2017 · 282 posts · 1k+ votes

Hey BiggerPockets Fam,

I've been doing Co-Living now exclusively since 2017, and the numbers speak for themselves. Co-living is how I went from renting a room, Delivering Dominos, no savings, and not being able to qualify for a loan to financial freedom & a $2M net worth in 15 months.  Now you can use it to "start cooking with gas".  Here's the facts why! 

1. Higher Demand

The rental market is shifting. One-person rental units are in the highest demand, and co-living directly appeals to this market. Shared housing provides affordable, flexible rental options for young professionals, remote workers, and students.

As shown above, co-living properties have more demand than traditional two-bedroom units and appeal to a wider tenant base.

2. Lower Start-Up Costs

Traditional real estate investing requires 20%-25% down, making it difficult for many to scale quickly. However, co-living allows you to acquire properties with as little as 0%-5% down, drastically reducing the amount of cash required.

Instead of needing $100K+ to buy a rental, a co-living strategy lets you start with a fraction of the cost while achieving higher returns.

3. Higher Returns

Co-living generates up to 5X the cash flow of a traditional rental. Why? Because instead of collecting one rent check per month, you’re collecting multiple payments from different tenants. It's like selling pizza by the slice!


A traditional single-family rental may net you only $280/month, whereas a co-living setup can bring in over $1,100/month from the same property.

4. Less Risk

With traditional rentals, if your one tenant fails to pay, you’re in trouble. Co-living, on the other hand, mitigates this risk by creating multiple income streams. If one tenant moves out, the property remains cash-flow positive. Additionally, it's easy for a house on one lease to get absolutely trashed by the renter. However, in Co-Living the most a renter can trash is their room. When you have multiple responsible adults sharing a house, if one "bad egg" slips in then you have the others renters to kick them out or report them. Additionally, in Co-Living the property manager walks the property once per month to deliver toilet paper & cleaning supplies (aka property inspection).

Co-living provides built-in diversification, lowering your financial risk compared to single-lease rentals.

5. Investors Love It

One of the biggest challenges in real estate is raising capital. Traditional deals often don’t excite investors—offering $200/month in cash flow isn’t very compelling.

But with co-living, you can offer 5X the returns, making it much easier to secure funding.

Now, instead of asking an investor to put up a 20% down payment for $200/month cash flow, you can pitch them a 5% down investment yielding $1,000+/month—a much more attractive deal.

Why Co-Living is the Future

Co-living isn’t just another strategy—it’s a high-demand, high-cash-flow, lower-risk investment model that aligns with today’s rental market trends. By leveraging shared housing, you can:
✅ Lower your initial investment
✅ Maximize cash flow
✅ Reduce financial risk
✅ Make better deals for investors

Questions for the Community

  1. What's your initial thoughts on the above?
  2. Have you tried co-living in your market yet? What challenges or successes have you experienced?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and continuing to learn together!

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  • Member since 2025 · 6 posts · 4 votes
    1y

    I will start by saying that I believe we are talking about slightly different forms of co-living.  Everyone seems to have their definition.  I would love to hear yours.  I would also like some examples for your points above based in the real world.  You show start up costs as lower for co-living.  Assuming we are talking about similar versions of co-living, I would argue it is higher.

    I own a co-living space in Pittsburgh, PA.  Part of a larger development.  It has done well.  Increased revenue and decreased parking demand allowed us to carry income-restricted units as well.

    We originally planned on spinning it out into a brand, but we never had the bandwidth to do so.

    Our largest hurdle has been education as most of our tenants are coming in to rent traditional units.

    Investors did not love it.  It has been a huge point of concern for large investors as they want to hedge risk and co-living is a complete unknown.  They won't touch it with a 10' pole unless they know you very very well and trust you even more.  We have explored disposing of the asset multiple times and the same comes up during sale.  

    If it is higher reward, it is because it is higher risk. 

  • Grant ShipmanPro Member
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Estes Park, CO · Member since 2017 · 282 posts · 1k+ votes
    1y

    cool! 

    Thanks for asking a clarifying question.  I'm speaking of co-living in a typical A or B level neighborhood house, so instead of a 20-25% down payment, we are speaking of a 1-5% down payment.  Do you think risk & reward always needs to be symmetrical? 

  • Renee BaconPro Member
    Real Estate Agent · Saint Clair, MI · Member since 2017 · 39 posts · 28 votes
    1y

    Are you talking about house hacking yourself, and using it as a co-living property? Because 0-5% down does NOT happen unless you are owner occupying the home. I've talked to a ton of lenders and if they know it's an investment property, you're looking at 15-20% down minimum (non owner occupied). Co-living also takes quite a bit of money to create more baths, walls, different electrical hookups, etc. It is not low cost.. you need 7-8 rooms per house to make it decently profitable. Plus managing tenants is a bit more time consuming with this model. (I'm also in a co-living mastermind)

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