Why the Houseshare Market is Broken

Ever wondered what shapes the essence of a home—is it the bricks and mortar, the location, or the people you share it with? Join us, your hosts Gareth and myself, as we peel back the layers of shared living spaces and examine the priorities individuals place on accommodation when embarking on a fresh chapter in a new city. We delve into the world of flatshare advertisements and their curious focus on property features over the potential harmony with future flatmates. With a fine blend of personal anecdotes and industry insights, we challenge the status quo, considering how the social fabric of coliving can deeply influence not just our living standards, but also our day-to-day happiness.

In this episode, we also contemplate how our living choices mold our personalities, advocating for a compatibility check akin to dating before you decide to share a roof. Ever seen those trendy communal areas in serviced apartments that are as deserted as a ghost town? We share our personal experiences and observations on the underuse of these spaces, probing into why design might be winning the battle against functionality. As we wrap up our chat, we leave you with the thought that perhaps it's not the avant-garde couch or the picturesque balcony that makes a living space enriching, but rather the moments shared and the connections made within its walls. Tune in for a profound exploration of the intersection between space, soul, and the subtle art of coliving.

Transcript

Daniel: 0:03

Welcome everyone to a new episode of ColivingDAO Insights. This is Daniel, your co-host, and I'm joined today, as usual, by Gareth, your other co-host. Hi, gareth.

Gareth: 0:14

Hey Dan, great to be back.

Daniel: 0:17

Great to have you back as well, and today we're gonna have some fun. Today we're gonna chat a little bit about something that we noticed, that it's pretty much the direction that, for some reason, society has taken when it comes to sheer dwelling, and what I want you to do right now is picture this scenario. Imagine moving into a new place. In fact, imagine moving to a new city, or maybe simply leaving your flat, moving to a different area in your own city, or even the same area, but a new flat, because for some reason, you have to move out. I'm sure that many of you can relate with this. I'm sure that many of you have had this experience of moving out to move into a new place, or some of you maybe haven't had it yet, but at some point you probably will, because the idea of living in the same place for all your life is a little bit outdated, I would say. So imagine that scenario, and here's the interesting thing when you are looking for a new place, let me ask you this question what is the most important thing? Let's say that, either for financial reasons or simply for lifestyle reasons, you decide not to live by yourself but to live with other people, which is typically something that a lot of people do, especially young people, but also older professionals, are doing more and more. And I'm not talking about some sort of short-term co-living where you're looking for an experience for a few weeks. I'm not even talking about looking specifically for a co-living space, because that's a great thing and we talk about co-living a lot, but that's something that is not as widespread as it should be, probably, or as it will be. That's what we hope and that's what we're seeing anyway. That's the direction that coliving is taking. But let's imagine you're just looking for a shared flat, just like the majority of young people, or even also young people that want to move to a new place.

Daniel: 2:10

Now, what is more important to you Is a location. Location is definitely important I mean, we can all agree on that depending on what your needs are. Is it the exact specs of all the different, not just rooms, but also kitchen appliances and everything else you're getting in your new place, or is it something that has to do with the people you're going to be living with? Like, imagine sharing a space and there's people around and all of a sudden you find yourself in a new place. What is the most important thing for you. Think about this. Imagine what your answer would be. Again, it doesn't have to be just one thing, of course. Multiple things can be important.

Daniel: 2:54

But if you think about the relative importance of all that, let's have a little fun exercise and let's just go out there and look at the ads. Let's say 99% of the ads for flat shares. What do they focus on? See what they focus on and let me know, is it in line with what's also important? And if so, why is that? And if they're not in line, why is that? So I know it's a bunch of questions in one go, but we're going to talk about this in this life-harder conversation today. So, gareth, what do you think is going on?

Gareth: 3:30

Great question, dan. Just a quick clarification for any American listeners we might have a flat as an apartment or like a house share, just in case you're wondering what on earth we're talking about. Yeah, it's a great question, isn't it Dan? So whenever you go and look at one of these online platforms to find a place to live, it usually does describe things like you know, there's three bedrooms, there's a living room, there's a kitchen with certain appliances in it, very functional things, very structural material things typically what you see in an ad on these platforms and then they might give you know, a bit of token information about the people that live there. For example, one of the platforms I'm looking at now says that there are two professionals aged between 25 and 36 in this particular flat share opportunity in East London, and that's all it says. And there's a whole bunch of information about where the nearest supermarket is, where the nearest train station is, which are really useful, practical pieces of information, for sure, but it's interesting just to see the weight of the attention and what things are focused on.

Gareth: 4:55

And then, if you think again, if anyone's listening, if you're imagining yourself moving, or maybe you are moving right now, maybe you're thinking about moving to live in a new city or live with some new people. What's the most important thing that you think about? Obviously, the location needs to be right. It needs to be, you know, near where you work or where you study, and that's a really big factor. But what about the actual place that you're going to live in?

Gareth: 5:23

Of course, most of us are going to start thinking about who am I going to be sharing with? Am I going to move in with friends I already have and know, but often that's not possible because your friends might not be available to move at the same time, depending on their study and work commitments. Everyone runs different schedules in today's world, and so you might have to start thinking about okay, I need to move in with strangers if I want to live in a house, share and share the bills and keep my costs down. So who are they? How do I find those people? How do I meet people, especially if it's a new city that I've never been to before? So there's a whole bunch of questions and not a lot of answers, Dan.

Daniel: 6:07

Exactly. We will be looking for answers, but let's refine the question a little bit, because what really interests me is that it's not just what we see on the surface, but it's what's beyond that. Let me give you an example. If we see that the vast majority of the ads place a lot of weight like you said, gareth, a lot of attention on some of the factors For example, the room specifications about the kitchen and transport and all stuff that you can probably just find on Google Maps you don't even need the ad to tell you where the connections are, because you can easily find it. Once you know the address, you can find all the connections anyway. Why waste ad space for that information? Minimal to no weight is placed on who else is living in an household.

Daniel: 6:57

Now, why is this happening in the first place? Is this happening because there is a major disconnect between what people are actively looking for and what the ads are displaying? Or is this happening because the disconnect is between what people think they're looking for versus what would actually benefit them? That's actually an important distinction to make there. Are we claiming that whoever is writing these ads is actually doing it with a lot of insights, thinking, hey, maybe it's true that people care about the household, but in reality, they're not aware of that. So let me just give them what they want.

Daniel: 7:37

That's one way of answering the question, but the other way would be oh no, look at that, the whole flashier ad marketing system is broken and only very few clever people are writing the ads the right way, because certainly some people are.

Daniel: 7:54

I'm not saying no one is, but it's a very tiny percentage if you look at the majority of the ads. So is it that people are doing it wrong when it comes to writing the ad, or are people doing it wrong when it comes to believing that they're looking for the wrong thing, or are people just looking at that? But you know what, if people are not looking at that, you probably haven't answered, because I asked you the question before and I'm sure that less than 99% of the people let's put it this way less than 99% of people care about the specs more than they care about the household. So this is what I'm pretty sure of. So, gareth, what do you think is happening here in reality and it could be a combination of everything, of course what do you think is really going on and how do you see things progressing in the near future as well.

Gareth: 8:46

Yeah, it's a really interesting question, dan. Why is the set format of how many rooms, what appliances you have, what the physical things are in a place and maybe it's just a hangover from traditional real estate property approaches to the way these things are done when, if you're selling a house, for example, that these are the things that you focus on, right? You focus on how big the rooms are, how many, what type of rooms are in the house, whether the house or the flat has a balcony, all these kinds of physical aspects, and maybe that's just bled over into these house share platforms and they've just sort of copy pasted that traditional mindset because there's just been an assumption that this is the way that people look for any kind of living arrangement. So maybe that's part of the reason.

Daniel: 9:44

But you know, let me zoom out for a moment because it makes perfect sense. You're saying, ok, people are looking at ads about whole properties, and when someone is looking for a whole property, there's no flat sharing element in there, there's no house sharing element in there. So it doesn't matter if there's information about people, because there's no other people living there anyway in the first place. So you will not see any information about that. But in reality, isn't that a point? Also, when looking for a whole flat or a whole house, don't you care about who your neighbors are? And I remember in the past actually viewing houses and asking because it was no answer anyway like who lives here? Who are the neighbors? Like, who's my next door neighbor and who's the other neighbor?

Daniel: 10:37

And in this area, like, is it mostly young people, old people, combination of that? Is it more, let's say, retired people? Is it more professionals? Is it more students? Is it families? Is it young couples with children? Is it young people without children? So there's so many different elements that are kind of overlooked. So I think even when looking for a whole flat or a whole house, still this is somewhat overlooked. So let's go a little bit deeper and what else could be happening there?

Gareth: 11:11

I think it's quite messy and complicated to really communicate human relationships right, and it's maybe easier to display the physical attributes of things, of a house share or a flat share, and so maybe these platforms have kind of thought about these things and thought, no, that's too complicated. And just to make it a bit more tangible for some of the listeners, I'm having a look at some ads now On a famous UK based flat sharing site and it does describe some of the relationships in the ads here in terms of what kind of people live in them and what they're looking for, what the landlords are looking for, what the tenants are looking for if they're in control of that property. They do have some like basic descriptions. So some of them will say things like no party animals, this is a quiet household, and others will say this is a sociable household, which is kind of implying the opposite, right, and you get these like very brief indicators, very tiny indicators, of what the kind of behavior is in, the relationships are between those people in that household, and I think that's part of the challenge. It's really hard to describe different personalities that are already in a property or a flat share of Dan and maybe that's just shied away from.

Gareth: 12:42

And another interesting aspect is maybe there's an assumption that people look for a particular physical, the physical attributes of a place to live, and then they look at the people that live there and the relationships. But that might not actually be right. It might be the case that if you were given the opportunity to somehow filter for the types of people who were living in the properties first, maybe that saves people a lot of time when they're searching for a place to live, because maybe when you found your perfect physical location, you then have to go and speak to the people that live there, if you even get that opportunity and then discover, oh no, I'm not right for them or they're not right for me, and then you have to take that property off of your shortlist and go and look at others. So maybe there's just a whole bunch of assumptions about the process of finding the right place to live and the right people to live with, and maybe the order is backwards, dan.

Daniel: 13:40

Oh, I love dissecting the decision making process in this case, and it may well be backwards. If you think about let's say this is a question for everyone if you think about the last 10 years of your life or the last 15 years of your life, what mattered more? Was it the model of toaster or kettle you had in your kitchen or the people you spend pretty much every day of your life with because you were living together? What do you think had a bigger impact on who you are right now? What do you think had a bigger impact on the experiences that made you who you are? The experiences that you simply enjoyed in your life? And I don't know what the answer is, but when we look at the vast, vast majority of the ad focusing on more like practical, transactional details versus relational and human based, I'm pretty sure the same proportion does not stand true when people answer the question that I just asked. What do you think, garth?

Gareth: 14:46

Yeah, 100%, dan. And you know, having living with people that you're compatible with, even on basic sort of belief systems, is really important, right. I mean, if you have, like a heavy metal or in the flat who wants to play I don't know practice drums or something really loud and create a lot of noise, and that's what gives them energy and that's how they live their life. And then you have somebody who wants to read books and study a lot and be alone and meditate and stillness. You know, these are huge differences in the way that people live their lives in the same spaces.

Gareth: 15:25

And then there's the hidden aspects of people's characters, like, does anyone actually readily admit that they are a clean freak, for example, when they're advertising somewhere to live? Or the opposite? Does anyone ever admit that? Hey, you know, the people we live with are super messy. So you know, you just need to get used to that or you need to be cool with it. These kinds of day-to-day sort of personalities, behaviors. It's really hard to see that and to get to grips with it until you actually know those people. And I guess that's part of the challenge, right, you have to really speak to or connect with potential flatmates. You almost have to. It's almost a bit like dating you almost have to get to know people as quickly as you can. You know, have you have a kind of first date with flatmates or potential flatmates to try and figure out who they are and how they're gonna behave? And we know that first dates are not always a reliable indicator of your future dates with a particular person, right?

Daniel: 16:31

That's a very good point, and I was thinking about precisely this how do you quantify some of the human traits? And the reason I say this is because sometimes it's very easy to say, oh, the flat is exactly seven minutes away from the station. It's not quantifiable. Easy to say the room is 15 square meters. Easy to quantify. How do you quantify people's personalities? But is this really the only thing going on?

Daniel: 16:58

Because, even though you cannot quantify that, or even though you cannot describe that in a way that is 100% precise, because of some subjectivity, in that, at the very least, the people can sort of self-describe just like they would on a dating app or simply a friend making kind of a platform we have and again, we mentioned this platform before. Couch surfing and any cultural exchange or hospitality exchange platform is really a good example as well. So, even though it's not a precise description, still it can give a good feel for what things would be like. And it's really in everyone's interest, because if a new flatmate chooses the wrong people to live with, this is as dysfunctional as the existing flatmates having a new person come live with them that they don't get on well with. So it's really in everyone's interest that the people choose the right match for each other. So this is why it's a little bit puzzling. But again, I think there might be a little bit of a stigma involved as well, and just like that, there used to be a stigma with dating apps in the past. A lot of people don't really wanna expose themselves too much, especially when it's not effectively a romantic dating exercise, finding flatmates. Maybe some people can feel a little bit of pressure of a or self-consciousness, but at the same time it's really important that people can give a reliable description of more or less what it would be like to live together. And surely people don't necessarily behave the same way every day and that's fine. But if someone is into board games versus someone who's into wild dancing all night, I think it makes a lot of sense to specify that, because it does give a good flavor about them. But those are some interesting questions, and what I'd like to do as well is if we broaden this conversation a little bit and if you wanna add something about this, gareth Beall means, do that. But I'll just add another prompt as well If we wanna broaden this conversation a little bit and think about how this applies to something that is kind of in between flat sharing and looking for a house, which is service accommodation.

Daniel: 19:28

So we notice that there's a lot of opportunities nowadays, especially in big cities, to live in an independent unit, meaning it's actually a flat and apartment which is independent, but we shared facilities. It's becoming more and more common. We've experienced this ourselves as well, and it's a very nice and comfortable way to live and having a lot of amenities around can be really nice. But obviously, again, there's a human element. So my question would be in this case we're not talking about co-living per se, we're talking about service accommodation, which, again, is probably something that has some elements of living in a single family unit and some elements of having some co-living aspects, although not very strictly. So, gareth, how does this all apply to this type of accommodation? And, of course, if you have any other thoughts you wanted to share about what we discussed earlier, feel free to do so as well.

Gareth: 20:28

Yeah, thanks, dan. Yeah, it's a really good insight to look at how the spaces are used in service accommodations and I find this really fascinating because I've lived in different apartments and places here in London and in my most recent apartment, which is a service accommodation, there are some shared spaces around the building and there's some really nice shared spaces. There's an outdoor area which is like a balcony, with plants and outdoor furniture. It's got a lovely view. You look out onto water and greenery, which is quite rare for a city, and nobody ever is out there, even when the weather is good. It's extremely rare to see someone sitting at one of those tables and I always look at it and always got me thinking because you could literally have like 50 people outside at any one point in time using those facilities, but there's rarely ever more than two and most of the time it's probably closer to zero.

Gareth: 21:32

And there's something in the way of the way that spaces are used are not always the way they look done. I think a lot of spaces in service accommodation are kind of designed to make them look really cool, especially today, like there's kind of a trend to make living spaces look a bit like the original kind of Google offices back in the day, which were quite innovative in the way that they approached office space, and then, of course, you've got offices like WeWork, who took that to the next level for temporary office space. And now I think we're seeing a similar thing in service accommodation, where these shared spaces are being made to look like kind of like a brochure for a place that somebody would aspire to live in, and then when you actually go there and you look at the space being used in practice, it literally looks like a photo from a brochure, because there's no people there using the space. And this is intriguing, like why are they not using the space? What's going on?

Daniel: 22:41

Yeah, this is very interesting and it really makes me think that, if we zoom out for a moment, effectively this is happening not just in the real estate industry, but also in many other industry. Let's think about hospitality, or think about restaurants, just as an example, even the fast food place Like. When people see an ad of a fast food place, they see this picture, maybe this burger that looks very appealing, but is this what people really want? One thing is what people's perception is and what probably speaks to their subconscious to an extent, and the other thing is what people really desire or even what people really benefit from, because probably people are not better off eating burgers every day especially fast food burgers, not even gourmet burgers versus eating healthy meals. So it's possible and again, it's not just that it's probably the same with many other ads in many other industries as well.

Daniel: 23:40

Sometimes what kind of engages our attention is not necessarily what's the most beneficial to us.

Daniel: 23:49

It's something that is designed to engage our attention. So it's very possible that for some reason, we've been conditioned to really feel engaged when we see an ad with luxurious facilities, with very nicely designed spaces and when I say nicely designed, I mean designed to look good, not designed to be functional, not designed to promote community and so on. And if you are interested in how to design spaces to favor community building, we had a great episode with Tom Manuel. You can go back and listen to that. You'll find it in the episode list. So certainly there's ways to do that and probably what's most functional doesn't necessarily look good. Even though it can look good, there's no reason why it cannot. But I understand that a lot of advertisers they want things that look very good on a picture and then in practice no one wants to use them for a number of reasons, partly being they're not designed to be used a certain way and partly being maybe those people that were attracted by how nicely something looks are not even the people that want to socialize in the first place, right?

Gareth: 25:01

Yeah, have a great example of that, dan. Have you ever looked at a designer seat that looks really cool? Like you look at this seat and you go, oh, wow, this is cool, it's kind of different, it's innovative, it looks like it's from the future, and then you sit in it and it's incredibly uncomfortable and you can sit in it for no more than like a minute and then you're like, oh, I need to get up. This is not really practical. I can't really sit with my laptop or I can't sit here comfortably and read a book, and then it doesn't get used.

Gareth: 25:29

And I've actually seen that in some of the shared department facilities that have come across in many different places. And it's kind of like this feeling of almost like a hotel lobby where you have these interesting seats dotted around and no one's sitting in them a lot of the time, and it's because they're not comfortable spaces or they're not inviting, or the things are not designed to actually be interacted with. They're almost designed to be looked at or having photos taken of them, rather than being functional for real world use. And I think this goes much deeper than that. I think this goes really deep and goes to the heart of how is it we want to live?

Gareth: 26:14

How do we want to use spaces? What is truly important for human beings when we live in a building, especially a shared building with shared facilities? Is it that we have cool looking designer seats and retro art on the walls, or is it something deeper than that? Is it something to do with the people that you meet on a daily basis or you cross paths with, the people you might spend some time with? What's more important, you know, this is starting to get a much more interesting in terms of what is it we really want in our living spaces?

Daniel: 26:52

Yes, and I am a firm believer that, no matter what you're thinking right now and again it might be different opinions and I get that but I firmly believe that five years from now, the people you'll have spent the most time with in those five years will have had a bigger impact on you than the way the facilities looked in your household or in the places you were visiting or living in. I truly believe that, and if you disagree, let me know, be happy to find out why. But that's what I definitely believe. And it's not just the people who they are, but also how you relate with them and how the spaces help you build relationships as opposed to almost encourage you not to socialize, because we've seen a lot of spaces just a good example uncomfortable, good-looking chairs Good example not to use them and nice-looking spaces that divide people as opposed to bringing them together. That's also going to have an impact.

Daniel: 28:01

So I strongly believe that this is where we're at right now and for all the ones of you that agree with this, for the ones of you that are listening to this and are thinking wait a minute, can we not just create a different future and make sure that whenever I'm moving to a new place. Other than having good facilities which is important, we agree why not knowing a little bit more about what people I can have around me and what I can do with those people, what relationships I can build, what community I can be plugged in, and what community I can be part of and contribute to an extent as well and get value from being part of that community as well? So if that's the future that you want, well, gareth, that's exactly what we're building here at Coal Living. That was on it.

Gareth: 28:52

Exactly. Imagine a future where you're going to move to a place or a building and you kind of know the personality of that building before you even go there. It might be a really strong theme or an interest that you have that is really aligned with that community. And you go there not because of how pretty the building looks or how amazing the designer chairs are. You go there because you know there are people you're going to connect with and align with. Imagine that future and that's what we're building at Co Living Dial. That's the approach that we're taking. So you know, build the community first, think about the relationships first and then, yeah, by all means, build amazing spaces to facilitate the community. But why not have the people first and the physical stuff second?

Daniel: 29:41

Exactly, and I also kind of feel that for the sustainability advocate like yourself, it must be quite painful to see all these empty spaces that surely must have been expensive to build, not just in terms of money but also in terms of resources for the planet, and then no one's really using them. I mean, if you only needed those for a picture, couldn't you have just done it in a different way, without needing them to be there the whole time?

Gareth: 30:09

100% done. I was trying not to come in as this super sustainability eco warrior yet again, but yeah, I mean, if you use spaces wisely, you get much more efficient use of them, and this is great for sustainability. And really the world could move way closer to having great experiences and relationships rather than focusing so much on material stuff and the way that things look, which feels a bit more superficial to me as well, and so it's nice to have sustainability aligned with human relationships.

Daniel: 30:46

Exactly, and that's the future we're looking to create as well.

Daniel: 30:49

So, if this resonates with you, if you want to see a future that is more sustainable, is more in line with our human nature and it's more relevant to what truly matters, because, once again, think about the next five years of your life, the next 10, 15 years of your life, even the next 20, 30, 40 years of your life what do you want?

Daniel: 31:08

Do you want a life where what matters to you is very transactional, very materialistic, or do you want a life where what matters is the human connections that you're building and the quality of the experiences that you're having in your life? If the answer is clear to you, then by all means, what you want to do is stick around. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast, make sure you stay tuned, because we are building something exactly like that here at Kullivendau. What we envision really is a future where everyone has the opportunity, whenever you want to move to a new place, to really make the decision, not just based on logistics, but also based on what type of people do I want to have around right now, around me in this particular moment of my life, and when that changes, how can we make that a seamless change. So, gareth, any final thoughts about how, here at Kullivendau, we are looking to build a future where people can be more in line and in resonance with these values and principles?

Gareth: 32:19

Yeah, I think we've already said it very clearly I'm looking forward to a future that we can help to build, where people look for a place to live based on relationships and connection rather than material things and spaces, so I think that'll be amazing.

Daniel: 32:36

Absolutely, and for everyone who's enjoyed this episode. Once again, we really look forward to having you here again and again. We're back next week, just like every week, we'll be here talking about community, talking about property, talking about society and talking about decentralization and how this future is really enabled by what we are experiencing as a transition in our age. So thanks again, everyone for being here and we'll be back with you next week.