Share house residents are resorting to renting living rooms by the minute: experts

Living rooms rentable by the minute are inevitable when hordes of low-paid Australians sleep in share rooms, a senior academic predicts.

Pointing to European start-up Ziferblat, which offers “café-style living space” capped at $15 to $20 a day, Dr Christian Tietz, who lectures at the University of NSW, says high-density, high-rent suburbs of Australia are “prime” for the deconstructed housing concept.

There are currently 14 of the Ziferblat “homes as a service” operating across Russia, the UK and Slovenia.

For a few cents per minute, capped at three or four hours, individuals rent access to a fully-equipped kitchen stocked with coffee and snacks, lounge chairs, bathrooms and dining areas.

“I don’t know if there is anything concrete moving to set up in Australia right now, but I do think we would be a prime target and it is only a matter of time,” the industrial design expert says.

“If you look at Australian cities from a global perspective you see we have city markets with very high rent with many people unable to afford the cost of permanent leased home accommodation, and we also have more and more people sharing rooms for sleeping, about 10,000 a night that we know of in Sydney and possibly as many as 100,000, as statistics are patchy.

“But you still need to have an option for how you spend your time during the day, aside from sitting in a coffee shop or library, a park bench or the beach, somewhere you can do things like cook a meal, somewhere you can be active in ‘your’ space rather than a passive agent, which is why Australian cities are ripe for a new option like this to come along.”

Dr Tietz stresses he neither “agrees nor disagrees with the idea” but is simply pointing out that it exists.

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He spent several months on a tight budget in Copacabana, Brazil, during which he paid to sleep in a three-bunk room himself.

It is incorrect to assume “only uni students” sleep in share rooms in 2017. “It is just not the case. It is actually anyone who cannot afford big rent; low income workers, people who work at 7-Eleven, all sorts of people.”

“I took it (the bunk bed) because I needed somewhere to sleep and you do what you need to do but you still need to be somewhere during the day … that is where this concept really starts to have appeal.”

Marion Mays, founder and CEO of the Thalia Stanley Group, is also a mentor with more than two decades’ experience in property finance, lending and assets recovery.

The Melbourne property expert is following the concept closely because “a female entrepreneur friend of mine” is developing a housing model that “competes in a high-end boarding house scenario”.

It will appeal to individuals who need to be close to work for blocks of time, she says.

“When I first looked at this idea, I could understand the concept in places like Japan and the UK where accommodation is usually quite small, or the local culture is you meet people out rather than have people over to your home usually to cut travel time and therefore there is real demand for spaces where one can spend time, especially places that are not centred around buying and consuming food.”

Mays names three markets that most suit a “rent-living-space-by-the-minute” housing product: people sleeping in share rooms, travellers and travelling business people.

“People are often left wandering streets or searching for cafes to pass time so there is an appeal for a commercial space where one can just ‘be’, whether to read a book, meet friends on common ground, have a gathering in a secluded location where you aren’t required to make unnecessary purchases just to hold a seat, or simply to work.

“It fills a practical gap in accommodation but, more importantly, fills a massive social void as it allows people to come together and encourages human connection.”

She predicts “its success is almost guaranteed” in metro areas of Australia “as it meets some of the most fundamental human needs beyond just renting space”.

“In saying that, the environment, styling and execution of how it’s rolled out in Australia will play a big part in determining that success.”