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Shared Apartments NYC
Co-living is a booming trend in New York City and other urban areas, in which large groups of young people — entrepreneurs, students, and workers — live under the same roof. The spaces, called 'hacker houses' or 'communes', are furnished, include utilities, and sometimes offer perks such as cleaning, WiFi, and HDTV. Popular companies offering this include WeLive, Bedly, and Common.
SCOPE
This research has only included 3 bedroom flats, with a focus on co-living services where possible. However, as co-living tends to brand itself as an all-inclusive service, unfurnished flats are still only rented through more traditional models.
I have chosen not to include student dorms, as they target a specific, separate market, or Airbnb-style services where you can rent a room in an apartment.
I started out by researching the co-living trend and found that whilst all of them lease by the room, this is often one of many rooms in a building, not just a three bedroom apartment. However, I have specifically sought data for 3 bedroom apartments to provide an accurate comparison and average across the board.
Please see attached the spreadsheet containing the final numbers, as well as a document containing screenshots of all the listings.
I have summarized below my research and findings for both furnished and unfurnished apartments.
FURNISHED CO-LIVING
Of the above co-living companies, Bedly was the only one that I found that gave prices for their 3 bedroom models. WeLive stated that they had 3 bedroom apartments on their website, but I could not find this data, whilst Common does not state the number of bedrooms in each flat.
As of 17th January 2018, there were 48 listings for 3 bedroom co-living spaces on Bedly: I have included the cheapest and most expensive of these, as well as the most mid-range (closest to the average between high and low, 1,129+1,524/2= $1,326.5) on the spreadsheet. Prices used are for fixed stay (they also offer a flexible month-to-month option), assuming a moving in date on the 17th January. Combined and calculated within the average, these provide an accurate representation of the website's prices.
The resulting average is $1,331 per month.
UNFURNISHED RENTING
There is an abundance of shared furnished apartments, but very few shared apartments that are unfurnished. This is because services that brand themselves as 'co-living' tend to include furniture and utilities as part of the service: none of the leading co-Living companies offer unfurnished apartments.
Instead, I have found listings for 3 bedroom apartments on traditional real estate websites, which will still give an indication of price. As with Bedly, I took the cheapest, most expensive (I excluded two outliers, a large condo and a luxury 2600sqf apartment), and a mid-range one (closest to 5495+2000/2= $3,747). For each one, I divided the listed price by 3 to get the price per person.
The resulting average is $1,249.17.
NOTES
Because the unfurnished flat prices have been taken from real estate websites, we can assume that the real price will also involve agency fees.
Both the most expensive and mid-range unfurnished apartments are in Manhattan, whilst two of the furnished ones are in Bushwick, Brooklyn. These numbers are simply based on flats available on those websites at the time of research. However, it might mean that the unfurnished prices are somewhat inflated compared to flats in similarly non-central areas like Bushwick.