Coworking in Coliving: Build or Partner?

Coworking and coliving have always overlapped, and people still get the two confused, so the coworking coliving question comes up in most of my conversations with operators. Pure coworking is built for businesses that want a location to bring employees together for the day. Coliving does something wider, folding the living side into the work side rather than treating them as separate. In my role as Head of Living at UrbanPay, the version of the question I hear from operators is more specific: do we build and staff our own coworking space, or do we partner with someone who already runs one?

Why a proper workspace is not optional

That overlap is exactly where the tension sits. Working from the same room where you eat, sleep and relax sounds convenient until it starts to blur into something harder to switch off from. One industry survey found that 68 percent of workers say their mental health improved once they separated their work environment from their living environment. That is not an argument against coliving, but it is a reason operators cannot treat the "living" part of the model as an excuse to skip a proper workspace.

I think there is a middle ground, and coliving is well positioned to own it. With flexible working policies now standard across most companies in Europe, a coliving member can genuinely choose between working from their room, moving down to a dedicated coworking space in the building, or heading into an office if their company has one nearby. That range of options is the actual product. Nobody wants to work from their bed for eight hours a day, and very few people want a commute either.

Either way, I do not think this is optional anymore, especially for coliving concepts built around remote and international workers. Industry analysts covering the sector now describe quality coworking access as a baseline expectation rather than a nice-to-have addition, the same shift reliable Wi-Fi went through a few years earlier. In the Lisbon coliving market it is already table stakes.

Build: when an on-site coworking space makes sense

Whether an on-site coworking space makes sense depends on who a coliving building is built for. For some target members it clearly does: a building full of remote employees whose companies have no local office will use the space every working day. Then the decision becomes a real estate one. The square metres given to desks are square metres not given to rooms, so the workspace has to earn its place either through higher rents and better retention, or through revenue of its own from external members and day passes. Building also means staffing and operating it, opening hours, meeting-room bookings, acoustic separation from the residential floors, and all of that is recurring cost that needs an owner on the operations team.

Partner: when a local coworking operator does it better

For other target members, a partnership with a local coworking operator achieves the same goal without the building having to carve out and staff its own space. That matters a lot for remote workers whose employer has no office anywhere near the city they have moved to, and it matters for smaller buildings where a dedicated floor would cost too many beds.

A partnership works when the terms are simple for the member: a number of included days per month, a clear price for extras, and a booking flow that does not require a separate account with the partner. It works for the operator when the commercial split is clear and billing creates no new manual work.

Billing for coworking without creating an accounting headache

One practical note for operators running either model. Billing a member or a guest for occasional coworking access, a day pass, a meeting room booked by the hour, is exactly the kind of small, frequent transaction that gets messy fast if it runs through the same manual process as rent.

A quick pay-link or QR code at the point of use, paid by account-to-account transfer and reconciled automatically rather than chased down at month end, is the difference between coworking feeling like an amenity and feeling like an accounting headache. It is one of the smaller but genuinely useful things we handle at UrbanPay alongside rent collection, through the same account-to-account payments the monthly rent runs on, and pricing is on the pricing page.

Deciding between the two

The honest answer is that the decision follows the member profile. If most of your members work remotely every day and your building has the space, build. If your building is small, your members are mixed, or a strong coworking operator already sits two streets away, partner. In both cases, treat workspace as part of the core offer rather than an add-on, and treat its billing as part of the payments stack rather than a side process. Operators serving international remote workers will find the same logic in digital nomad visas for coliving operators.

FAQ

Does every coliving building need a coworking space?

Every coliving building needs quality workspace access. Whether that is on site or through a partner depends on the member profile and the building's size.

How should an operator charge for day passes and meeting rooms?

At the point of use, with a pay-link or QR code that reconciles automatically, so small frequent charges never run through the same manual process as rent.

Should a coliving build its own coworking or partner with a local operator?

It depends on who the building is for. Concepts built around remote and international workers whose employers have no office nearby usually justify an on-site space; for other profiles a partnership with a local coworking operator delivers the same access without carving out and staffing your own floor.

Talk to Óscar

If you run a coliving, flex living or student housing operation and want to see how collection, verification and contract signing fit together on your volumes, book 20 minutes with me or write directly.

Book 20 minutes with Óscar · [email protected] · Contact UrbanPay