Who are we?
Vauban&Fort has been one of the coliving pioneers in Luxembourg since 2015. We match potential tenants in terms of background, lifestyle and values and create harmonious coliving spaces. Outside of work, your home is the second most important place and its importance should not be underestimate in terms of rest and well-being. The fact that tenants are socially integrated in a functioning coliving community and feel good is essential to our partner businesses who depend on qualified staff to remain in Luxembourg.
At VF we are in touch with a large amount of people who consider making Luxembourg their home and each year we interview close to 1000 potential tenants. We are able to offer a home to about 10-15% of these who join our managed communities. Over the last few years our year-on-year growth is around 30-40% with an annual turnaround close to 1.35m in 2021. The knowhow and expertise within our company makes us one of the thought leaders of Coliving in the Grand Duchy and within the wider coliving movement we have also been invited to speak at the Colive Summit in Paris two years ago.
Outside of work, your home is the second most important place and its importance should not be underestimate in terms of rest and well-being.
Our core product - what is it?
Our core product is the “master lease” where we become the unique tenant of the owner and guarantee the rent long term (3-5years +). Our product is very similar to a “gestion locative” but without any cost for the owner. We include professional cleaning and maintenance free of charge as well as a property manager who visits the property in person on a monthly basis. The goal is to offer peace of mind to owners without any reduction in income and to assure that they have a good ROI on their properties (no rent loss, timely payments and maintenance that upholds the quality of their property).
What are the drivers of the coliving (r)evolution?
Since about 2016, Coliving has become ever more popular and more widely accepted also here in the Grand Duchy. It is important to make a distinction between random people living together (rooms arbitrarily booked on the internet) and a thriving, managed community on the other hand. These two things are not the same and the careful management of a community is needed to make it a success. For us this is the basis of our business and our substantial growth rate of the last few years vindicates this business model.
Particularly RE Investors increasingly see the opportunity to have it all: a high degree of financial stability avoiding rental losses (since the rent is guaranteed for 5years+ whereas traditional tenants tend to change every 2-3years), having a 360degree management of their properties and at the same time paying no extra fees for all of the above.
There are several drivers that fuel the (r)evolution in the rental market for coliving: the high amount of expats that continuously arrive in the Grand Duchy as well as the elevated real estate prices in conjunction with an urban lifestyle that most expats expect, are some of the factors that continue to drive a strong demand. This is irrespective of the current exceptionally high utility prices which further increase the demand as potential tenants are looking to save money. Rather than renting a one bedroom or a studio by themselves, coliving offers an attractive package by pooling resources and reducing isolation and loneliness. The social factor is a fact not to be underestimated either, as millennials and Gen Z tenants are more flexible, are used to sharing and prioritize lifestyle. From a financial point of view it also makes sense because the rental yield of a coliving property tends to be higher since more people are living in the same space than traditionally would have been occupied by an individual couple only.
We expect that the coliving market continues to experience a substantial growth over the years to come, particularly within the city itself and will slowly become mainstream. Families prefer to live a little bit further outside and continue to rely on their own car (something which is not really a necessity in Coliving although there are strong trends towards shared mobility in coliving as well).
What role does proptech play in Coliving?
To some extent coliving is at the very forefront and an early adopter for proptech. Coliving operators are continuously looking for innovative software solutions that enable seamless communication between tenants. This is absolutely essential in a sharing and COliving setup and there is a whole software industry that has grown out of this need.
Our tenants are highly teched-up and social media savy, they expect a certain level of service and a smooth exchange of information across multiple platforms (social media, email or chat platforms). An efficient backoffice management tool is an integral part of that and we have a customized CRM to deal with diverse, multi-platform queries.
Coliving operators are continuously looking for innovative software solutions that enable seamless communication between tenants.
Currently we are also implementing a community app that will go live before the end of the year to enhance the social interaction between our tenants, increase efficiency in terms of our responses to ticketing and queries and in turn free up resources within our team. There are also various PMS (Property Management Solutions) available, some of which are developed here in Luxembourg, too.
A wider trend in real estate and certainly within coliving as well is the digitalization of properties that allow for a virtual tour through a given property from the comfort of your couch and which changes the way property viewings and sales are being done.
Since a substantial amount of our resources go into community building and selecting the right tenants to join a given community, we are also investigating software solutions that help pair tenants according to their character assessment. This selection process is based on the big 5 traits of psychological profiling often used in recruitment.
Digital keylocks and keytags familiar to most people in an office are becoming ever more popular too and we are also using these to remotely allow access to rooms. Interestingly enough some of these solutions are again also developed here in the Grand Duchy but the overall important of proptech for coliving cannot be underestimated.
Property owners, real estate developers or property fund managers, if you would like to find out more about our services or for any coliving consulting, do not hesitate to get in touch .