The Future of Coliving | Q&A with James Grasso of Cohabs

Over the past decade, coliving has gained popularity among renters as a convenient, relatively affordable way to live in cities, offering some of the cost benefits of finding roommates on Craigslist without the risk and thrash. Most coliving operators—including my own Common, which merged with European operator Habyt a year ago—took an asset-light approach, signing management agreements with coliving developers.

Brussels-based Cohabs has taken a different, more vertically-integrated approach. Rather than sign third-party management agreements—or master lease buildings—Cohabs raised a $450M PropCo from Ivanhoe Cambridge in 2022 and has since been buying multifamily buildings across the US and Europe.

This week we spoke with James Grasso, Head of US Real Estate at Cohabs. We explored:

• What coliving means in Cohabs’s model;
• The structure of their partnership with Ivanhoe Cambridge;
• The pluses and minuses of being a vertically-integrated owner-operator;
• Cohabs’s “Buy Box” and investment criteria;
• Thoughts on the future of coliving including predictions of exit cap rate compression;

Read on for more…