From coliving to flex-living: 38,716 units by 2028

Coliving fades and flex-living is projected to reach 38,716 units by 2028

Since January, Catalonia has subjected all housing to rent caps, the central government wants to extend that model through the Urban Lease Law (Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos), and the Madrid region has sharply increased inspections of tourist apartments. The result is an unusual consensus among administrations of different political stripes: residential land is for living in, not for temporary stays. And while room rentals fade, the sector already has a replacement: flex-living, a hybrid of aparthotel and temporary housing built on tertiary land, which is cheaper, and which according to JLL will grow from 19,089 to 38,716 units by 2028.

What flex-living is and how it differs from coliving

It is worth separating two things that marketing deliberately mixes up. Room rentals —what was for a while sold as coliving— split a family home among strangers. Flex-living is something else: an evolution of the traditional aparthotel, with services and temporary stays, built on plots intended for hotels or offices.

The difference is not aesthetic, it is about land. By not competing for residential housing, the format escapes much of the regulatory offensive and neighborhood scrutiny. Ignacio Pareja, CEO of Momentum Real Estate, a firm that pioneered this type of development, argues that flex-living "on its own, is not the solution to the problem," but defends that the funds developing it "are helping to solve part of it": they free up city-center apartments for residents and push temporary demand toward more peripheral neighborhoods.

Some argue that moving tourist pressure out of the historic center relieves the market, yes, but also shifts the coexistence problem to areas that did not have it before.

Madrid: 5,098 tourist apartments in the center equal the entire Plan Vive in six years

INE figures put the number of homes devoted to tourist rentals in Spain at around 400,000, less than 1.5% of the total housing stock. The average is misleading. In central districts that share soars to 10% and exceeds 20% on specific streets. In Madrid's Centro district alone there are 5,098 vacation rental homes.

To put the figure in perspective: it is practically the same as the 5,211 homes that the Plan Vive has delivered across the Madrid region in six years. One district, the same volume as six years of public housing policy. There lies the headline that the aggregate statistics hide.

Add to that the boom in room rentals, growing at rates of 15% and 20% in cities like Madrid and Barcelona. Less family supply, more turnover, rising prices. The cocktail that has pushed administrations to act.

The regulatory offensive: Catalonia, the central government and Madrid

Catalonia has been the most determined. Since January it has subjected all housing to rent caps, regardless of whether the rental is seasonal or by rooms. The central government wants to export that model to all of Spain by amending the Urban Lease Law, and the Madrid region, without touching the residential rental regime, has just tightened the framework for tourist homes and sharply increased inspections.

It is rare to see administrations of opposite political stripes agree on anything. Here they agree: residential land, they say, is for living in. And the calculation is simple. If those homes return to long-term rentals or are sold to families, supply grows much faster than building new construction.

The awkward question remains. Where do all the people occupying those apartments go?

Who is selling coliving and who is buying tertiary land

Funds have already made their move. The year started with two significant deals: Patron Capital sold its coliving portfolio and Habyt transferred its shared-housing portfolio to focus on developments on tertiary land. At the same time, Stoneshield, Bain, Stoneweg, BGO, BlackRock and Twin Peaks are investing hundreds of millions in developing new buildings.

The figures handled by JLL Spain are telling. To the current 19,089 operational beds, 19,627 more will be added to close 2028 with 38,716 units. Paola Erhardt, director at the consultancy, sums it up plainly: Spain will double its flexible housing stock in three years.

• 19,089 flex-living beds currently operational
• 19,627 new units planned through 2028
• 38,716 total units by the end of 2028

For investors the business is a bargain: tertiary land, cheaper than residential, and double-digit returns. In Valdebebas, according to a user in the thread, several of these buildings were going up at the same time a year ago.

Divorce at 45, 700 euros for a room, and a fading middle class

Behind the balance sheets are biographies that never make the brochures. A student shared an apartment with three friends under the name of coliving and lived with an elderly couple who ended up calling the police on Saturdays. Another case: a 45-year-old man, recently divorced, starting from scratch with a salary from two decades ago and twice the obligations, paying 700 euros for a room in a building with a tourist apartment upstairs.

That is the real ground of the market. And it explains why a topic that was not in the script has entered the public conversation: inheritance as a mechanism for accessing housing. Some argue that the only way for children to get ahead is to transfer assets to them during their lifetime, while others point out that handing over a property to a child does not exempt the owner from declaring 1.1% to 2% of its cadastral value as imputed income in the IRPF (Spanish income tax).

The most repeated diagnosis is that the middle class is shrinking at both ends and that salaried work has stopped being an elevator. The discussion stalls right there: on whether flex-living is a market solution, a patch that glosses over the problem, or simply the next layer of the same business under another name. The 2028 data will tell which of the three it was.