Coliving in Madrid: €475 room on Gran Vía for over-50s

Sharing a flat at 50 under the label of coliving: €475 on Gran Vía

Living with others past the age of 50 has ceased to be seen as a misfortune and has become a product with an English name. A room in a ten-person house near Gran Vía costs €475 a month, including gas, electricity, Wi-Fi, weekly cleaning, and linen changes. The price is real. So is the packaging: what was called a rented room half a century ago is now marketed as coliving.

The case that best illustrates this is Adriana’s, who moved from Zaragoza to Madrid in September 2022 to work four days a week at her company’s headquarters. She only needed three nights, so she ruled out renting a whole apartment. A friend mentioned the word coliving, which she had never heard before. She ended up booking a room at Kanso Coliving, on a street parallel to Gran Vía, a five-minute walk from her workplace.

€475, nine housemates, and an eleven-month contract

She shares the house with nine people between their twenties and early thirties: a nurse, a French sales representative, a telecommunications employee, a woman preparing for civil service exams, a German teacher from Austria, and four exchange students. The fee covers gas, electricity, Wi-Fi, room cleaning, and weekly linen changes. The contract requires proof that her primary residence is outside Madrid, meaning she cannot register her address (empadronarse) in the capital.

Parties, visitors, and pets are not allowed in the building. She booked the minimum four months required by the company, renewed for another eleven—the maximum—and does not rule out trying other centers. Her life in the flat is reduced to eating and sleeping. “This is ideal for me,” she summarizes. She spends the rest of her time working, at the gym, or at the cinemas and theaters almost next door.

Why adults over 50 live in shared flats

The average age in these centers is around 30 years old, and most clients are students and young workers. But the profile is shifting. There are people relocated for work who sleep there only three or four nights and, according to some comments in the debate, also divorced individuals who have lost use of the family home. Mario, 50, chose a Urban Campus coliving center in Atocha for its included services, easy access, and workspace areas.

“I understand that some people prefer a hotel, but a hotel is much colder,” reflects Adriana, acknowledging the shock some feel seeing older people in these houses. She herself sets a condition: if her social life were active in Madrid or if she had to stay all week, she would not live in a coliving space.

Coliving, subletting, or rooms with kitchen access

Here the debate begins. One part of the analysis sees nothing new: it is just sharing a flat with an English word attached to make it sound better. The old formula had specific names—rooms with kitchen access, pensions with laundry service—and looked quite similar to this. Another current raises the tone and compares these flats to the overcrowded housing in Madrid during the 1950s and 60s, when several low-income people shared a home in the city center.

Against that interpretation, some distinguish between well-executed coliving and simply rebranded flat-sharing. The former, they argue, consists of hotel-style rooms with private bathrooms designed for long stays, with common living rooms, kitchens, and laundries, plus extras that standard hotels do not offer. The latter is business as usual with marketing. The confusion between both models is, precisely, the business.

What does the alternative cost without coliving?

The numbers used in comparisons are not encouraging. According to calculations circulating in the debate, against the €475 all-inclusive room, there are accommodation offers in Tres Cantos for €575, rooms described as cramped starting at €600, and an apartment in central Madrid with utilities costing €700. The difference is not just price: in an apartment, you must cook, arrange utilities, and live with strangers anyway.

One comment summarizes the other side of the calculation: what you save on housing ends up being spent on pre-cooked food.

Centers segmented by age: the upcoming business

Companies in the sector are already considering opening centers segmented by age, with specific offerings for adults and seniors. The commercial argument is that easy access, coexistence with more than 50 different nationalities, and all-inclusive services make the model attractive for this segment too. From the business side, it is emphasized that young and older people coexist without problems, helping and respecting each other.

The company itself acknowledges differences in usage: younger profiles spend more time in common areas, while older residents are barely in the house, spending time between work and the streets. Intergenerational cohabitation works as long as there is little overlap.

With central Madrid prices where they are, it is predictable that demand for rooms with included services will continue to grow across all age groups, not just among twenty-somethings. Whether this growth translates into truly segmented centers rather than the same subletted room with a new label remains to be seen. No one has signed off on that future yet.