The differences between sharehouse living in your 30s vs your 20s

• Tips for acing your share house interview​
• Changes needed for rental agreements
• A guide to a rent-free life

When I last wrote about the rise of “adult share-housing” back in 2015, the mood was sombre. Concern about the housing crisis was peaking and young (ish) people of a certain age were resigning themselves to being lifelong renters. The general consensus was that, in a perfect world, everybody sharing the rent with other people would actually rather be living by themselves.

After a decade of renting solo (in multiple countries!), returning to sharing felt like it was, if not an outright defeat, then at least an acknowledgement of an emerging reality: renting solo, in the mid-2010s, is a luxury few can afford.

Now, two years into the Great Return To Share-Housing Experiment, I’ve found a different mood has emerged. What began as “I guess I will make this work” has turned into “I can’t believe I wasted so much time and money living like a fancy hermit”.

After shifting gently back into sharing by living with a dear friend for a year and a half, I’ve moved a little further north and now live in a household of four. Life is less lonely, chores are no longer an unrelenting hellride that takes up an entire Sunday, and on dodgy days there’s always someone there for a breakfast or dinner to debrief with.

I’m certain none of this is news to anybody who has been a committed sharer for any long period of time; I’ll freely admit that my newfound love of sharing is a little like someone emerging from a 45-year coma and being thrilled to discover the wonders of colour television.

Living solo for a decade from the age of 23 also meant I bypassed the usual nightmares of early-20s share-housing like stale bong-water, never-ending parades of couch-crashers and mysterious fridge sludges. My reticence about sharing could probably be traced back to hearing a few such nightmare tales recounted back in the day (including one especially “memorable” story about a milkshake blender and a… actually forget about that one).

Renting solo, in the mid-2010s, is a luxury few can afford. Photo: Stocksy

Sharing as adults (proper adults, not just legal ones) means that house meetings are genial chats rather than tense interventions, and the future of the household is something collectively designed rather than dealt with month-to-month by assemblies of transient housemates.

This happy spin on sharing is, to be clear, not a case of making the most of a bad situation. Yes, the rental market in Melbourne is very much “a bad situation”, just as it is in other Australian cities (and, increasingly, major regional centres, too). Rather, I’ve found returning to sharing as an adult has illustrated the benefits of a collective approach to living that we might, in an increasingly deranged world, do well to consider adopting.

The life milestones that once signalled an expected exit from shared living (or, prior to that, from the family home) have shifted. It’s no longer unusual for one room in a sharehouse to be inhabited by a couple alongside other singles, nor is it unheard of for people in shared housing to be caring for babies or children.

The Commons, a block of 24 award-winning apartments, was designed with a sense of community in mind. Photo: Andrew Wuttke

Similarly, architects and developers have also begun to realise the benefits of fostering a sense of community in apartment blocks, spaces that have traditionally been light on common areas; Brunswick’s The Commons is one such success story.

As for me, failing winning the lottery, either literally or romantically (and yes, I did end up buying that single bed), it’s hard to imagine returning to my former life as a solo renter.

It may well take a village to raise a child, but it’s also quite nice to be a member of a village yourself, however small it is.