One house.
Six incomes.
Most property investors buy one house and collect one rent. Co-living asks a simpler question: if six people are going to live in that home anyway, why is it earning like it houses one?
The same house. Two ways to let it.
Perth · gross weekly rent
What co-living actually is
If the strategy is new to you, here's the whole idea in a paragraph.
A co-living home — sometimes called a HMO, a house of multiple occupancy — is a house designed so that each bedroom is a private, self-contained space with its own ensuite, and the kitchen, living areas and outdoor space are shared. Each housemate signs their own agreement and pays their own rent. Bills, wifi and cleaning of the common areas are typically bundled into one weekly figure.
That's it. It isn't a boarding house, it isn't student digs, and it isn't a share house with a whiteboard for the milk money. It's a properly built, properly managed home where six adults each have their own front door and share a very good kitchen.
The investment logic follows from the design. A standard four-by-two is valued and let as a single unit. A purpose-built co-living home is six lettable rooms in the same footprint, on the same block, drawing on the same land value — which is why the income profile looks so different while the address looks perfectly ordinary from the street.
"The house doesn't change. What changes is how many people it was designed to serve."
The people renting them aren't a fringe market either. They're nurses, tradies, FIFO workers, students, new arrivals, people mid-divorce, people saving for a deposit — anyone for whom a whole house is too much and a bedsit is too little. Perth's vacancy rate has spent years near zero. Demand for good, affordable, private-but-shared housing has never been higher.
Three things do the heavy lifting
Six streams, not one
Rent is collected per room rather than per house. That multiplies the gross income on the same land, and it spreads your vacancy risk across six agreements instead of concentrating it in one.
Cashflow, from the start
Standard Perth rentals return roughly 3–5% gross. Structured well, co-living consistently reaches into the 8–14% range — which is the difference between funding a shortfall each month and being paid each week.
It adds rooms, not just returns
Every home we deliver puts more affordable rooms into a market that badly needs them. That's not a nice-to-have — it's increasingly the behaviour that policy is written to reward.
Most investors now have to choose. This asset doesn't.
Negative gearing didn't die. It moved. From 1 July 2027, established property bought after Budget night is quarantined — while new builds keep both the deduction and the CGT discount. The market is being split into "chase the tax break" or "chase the yield." Purpose-built co-living reaches for both at once.
Established property
Bought after 7:30pm AEST, 12 May 2026 — losses quarantined from 1 July 2027.
- Negative gearing against wage income restricted
- Typical gross yield of 3–5%
- One tenancy, one income, all your vacancy risk in one place
- The shortfall is funded out of your pocket while you wait for growth
New-build co-living
On the favourable side of both changes — and cash-flow positive from the first tenancy.
- New build: negative gearing and the 50% CGT discount preserved
- Let by the room, reaching well beyond a standard single lease
- Six agreements — vacancy costs a fraction, not the lot
- Adds genuine housing supply, which is exactly what the rules reward
The 2026 Federal Budget measures described are subject to final legislation and official guidance, and may change. This page explains what the changes mean and why new-build co-living is structurally advantaged — it does not promise that any individual build qualifies. Seek independent advice that considers your own circumstances.
Good returns and good housing aren't opposites
This is the part most investment pitches skip, and it's the part we care most about.
The housing conversation in this country is usually framed as a fight — investors versus renters, returns versus fairness, someone wins and someone pays. We've never accepted that framing, because our own numbers refuse it. Every home we deliver houses six people who could not otherwise afford to live where they now live, in a room they're actually proud of, and it pays its owner more than the house next door.
That's not a trade-off dressed up in nice language. It's the same building doing both jobs at once. More rooms, better rooms, more affordable rooms — and a better return. We've housed over 2,500 people this way and delivered 1,083 rooms toward a goal of 10,000 in ten years.
It's why the mission is "changing the world one property at a time," and why we talk about using profit as possibility rather than treating profit as the point.
Sustainable living
More people housed per dwelling, per block, per unit of land and materials. Density done properly, in homes people want to live in.
Financial freedom
Income that arrives weekly, not equity you hope shows up in a decade. Cashflow is what buys back your time.
Cashflow wealth
Positively geared from the first tenancy — the asset funds itself and funds the next one.
Win-win for all
Housemates get an affordable, private, well-run home. Investors get a return. Neither is paid for by the other.
Profit as possibility
Profit isn't the point — it's what makes the next hundred rooms possible.
10,000 rooms in 10 years
1,083 delivered so far. Every home is one more step, and every investor is part of it.
Real homes. Real yields. Real housemates in them.
These aren't projections. They're completed Concierge builds, tenanted and performing.
A Victoria Park build currently returns $2,460 per week — an 11.2% yield on an $850,000 all-in cost, delivered on a six-month average timeline. See the full track record →
"So who actually fills the rooms?"
It's the right question, and it's the one most co-living spruikers can't answer. A six-room home only works if six good housemates are in it and staying in it — which is a management problem, not a building problem.
We answer it with Living Rooms, our own housemate-matching and property management arm. Same team, same standard, running since 2017. We source it, we build it, and we fill it — the only genuinely end-to-end solution for co-living investors in the market.
How Living Rooms worksThe questions investors actually ask
Is a co-living home the same as a boarding house?
Not in the sense most people mean it. What people picture is a tired building with a bathroom down the hall and a stranger behind every door. That is not what we build. Ours are purpose-designed homes where every bedroom is private and ensuited, and each housemate signs their own agreement. From the street it's a house. Inside it's a very well-organised one.
The regulatory answer varies by state, and we'd rather be straight than clever about it. In Western Australia our homes are ordinary residential dwellings. In Victoria, a home let by the room to four or more people sits within the state's rooming house framework — council registration, a licensed operator and a specific building classification. We meet that standard on every Victorian project. It isn't something we work around; it's a floor we build well above, and it's part of why our homes stay full.
Isn't the tenant turnover higher?
Turnover is more frequent per room, but far less painful per home. When one housemate of six moves on, roughly one-sixth of the income pauses briefly — versus a standard rental where a single departure takes 100% of the income to zero. Six smaller risks beat one large one, provided the management is good, which is why Living Rooms exists.
Will a bank lend on it?
Yes — these are standard residential dwellings, and finance is a normal part of every Concierge project we run. Lender appetite and valuation approach do vary, so it's the first thing we work through on a strategy call rather than something to leave to chance. Our Concierge Service also carries a 100% money-back guarantee if finance can't be secured.
Does it only work in Perth?
Perth is where we started and where most of our 1,083 rooms sit. We now develop in Melbourne as well, under Victoria's own rules. The principle travels: it works wherever there's rental demand, a shortage of affordable single-person housing, and land you can build on sensibly.
Do I have to do this myself?
No — and that's the point of the two paths. Our Concierge Service is entirely done-for-you: we source, build, fit out, fill and manage, backed by our finance, rental and build-time guarantees. If you'd rather learn to run the strategy yourself, the Coliving Cashflow Academy teaches the whole method, and your Academy fee is credited if you later upgrade to Concierge.
How many rooms does a home have?
Six is our most common configuration, and it's what most of our 1,083 rooms were built as. But the right number isn't a fixed rule — it falls out of the site, the local planning rules, your budget and the return you're aiming at. Bigger isn't automatically better: more rooms means more cost, more management and, in some places, a different regulatory regime entirely. That's a feasibility question we answer on your specific site with real numbers, not one we guess at up front.
What's the catch?
It's harder than buying a four-by-two. The design has to be right, the site has to be right, the build has to be managed, and the home has to be filled with the right people and kept full. Every one of those is a place to get it wrong. That's the whole reason this business exists — not because co-living is easy, but because it isn't.
Run your numbers with someone who's done it 1,083 times
A 30-minute strategy call: your goals, your borrowing capacity, and an honest answer on whether co-living is the right move for you. No pitch, no pressure — and if it isn't right for you, we'll tell you.