The Business of the roommate in Bordeaux

While the real estate rental market in all the major cities of France is in a tense flow for small apartments and struggles to satisfy applicants, some have found that apartments of larger sizes had difficulty finding buyers because of the amount of rent to be paid each month. At the same time, tenants are looking to pay “reasonable” prices to live in a decent living space and are therefore increasingly turning to flatshares. A turn that the owners seem to have forgotten to take…

A market with tremendous potential

30 to 40% per year is the fast pace at which the flatshare market in major French cities is increasing. Still residual in 2014, the flatshare is now showing itself in a new light, much juicier.

A dozen cities are affected by this increase in demand and, in this matter, we will be surprised to learn that Paris is not in the lead. Thus, it would appear that the increase in demand is no stranger to the recent attractiveness of some provincial cities and metropolises.

Currently, and according to the sources, the rental stock occupied in shared accommodation would not exceed 10%. However, this is far from satisfying the number of applicants, since in all cities subject to this trend, the demand is significantly higher than the number of housing open to this practice.

To take advantage of this market, major developers are beginning to take an interest in roommates and to design offers specially designed to accommodate roommates. They thus favour medium-sized individual rooms (10 to 12m2) to accommodate bed, wardrobe and office, living spaces in common with interesting surfaces (about 25m2) and bathrooms with optimized spaces.

Motivations that make tenants think

With soaring prices for both purchase and rent, tenants are increasingly facing difficulties in finding healthy housing in the budgets they agree to set aside for their rent. At the same time, real estate agencies are tightening their selection criteria and it is becoming more and more difficult to pass the entrance tests in an apartment.

This situation has led to a small revolutionary momentum among many tenants who refuse to ruin themselves to find a home. Added to this is the great trend of collaboration and new uses that no longer regard individual ownership and enjoyment as an end in itself. In recent years, there has been a clear preference for the sharing of goods and costs in order to reserve a greater part of its budget for other expenses (food, leisure, sport, etc.).

Thus, if economic motivations are indeed the main ones (84%), other more surprising reasons emerge. This is the case, for example, with intergenerational solutions that help change the face of the roommate. Now, the roommate also attracts elderly people looking for a younger company, able to help them in certain tasks of daily life to protect their independence and guarantee them financial security in addition to a meagre retirement.

Unfounded homeowners’ concern

Today, 7 out of 10 landlords admit to being reluctant to open their doors to the flatshare. The main brake? The fear of noise pollution, the degradation of the premises and the unpaid due to the fact that the main stakeholders are students.

However, various surveys place the share of students looking for roommates at around half of the applicants. The rest includes the active (employees, trainees…) or retirees (20% of the roommates are over 50 years old).

Beyond these concerns, it should be noted that the flatshare is the solution to quickly and profitably rent large dwellings, which have difficulty finding buyers. Rather than trying to rent them to a family, accepting multiple tenants increases profitability by 30-50%, with individual rents approaching those of a studio rather than a large apartment divided by the number of tenants.

In addition, with the new profiles of roommates, rentals are longer and rental holidays are increasingly rare and short.

These are all reasons that should motivate landlords to open their assets to the flatshare.

Bordeaux, the French Eldorado for donors?

Apart, the French leader in sites for the search for roommates, to present the figures of the flatshare in France and Bordeaux. It shows that it is the most saturated market in France with, in 2015, 20 roommates for a single room available. By comparison, Nantes, France’s second most demanding city, had 14 applicants for a room, and Paris, France’s ninth largest city in this regard, had 9 aspiring roommates for a room.

Since 2014, provincial cities have seen an increase in demand. Bordeaux posted an explosion of around 81% and Rennes, 86%.

In Bordeaux, Meltycasa is also tackling this market. To differentiate themselves from the already well-established competition (Appartager, Weroom de Nexity or even LeBonCoin), they rely on matching candidates based on their hobbies and lifestyles.

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