Preliminary responses to our inaugural Apac Living Investor Survey show that 35% of blue-chip institutional real estate investors expect their allocations to the living sector to increase by more than 30% over the next five years. Co-living emerged as the second most targeted sub-sector.

Stabilised assets are highly sought after, particularly in markets such as Singapore. For value-add investors, this creates a clear exit pathway, as core capital typically seeks stabilised assets with proven income streams.

Capital is increasingly backing operators that can bring their expertise into new markets and unlock scale. This trend is already evident, with activity over the past two years becoming increasingly cross-border, strategic and platform-led.

Read also: The Assembly Place, TS Home to repurpose Phoenix Park into Singapore's largest co-living destination

Examples include Mitsubishi Estate’s acquisition of Habyt’s Singapore and Hong Kong platforms, the regional expansion of Warburg Pincus-backed Weave Living, the growth of Rava-backed Dash Living, and Keppel-backed Cove’s acquisition of Casa Mia Coliving.

Value of flexibility

Co-living products differ across length of stay, unit format, regulatory classification, target resident and operating model. This definitional looseness exists across the region, but Singapore is at the more mature end of the spectrum, with roughly 10,000 professionally managed operational co-living rooms. It offers a framework or roadmap for growth in cities where the sector is still emerging.

The diversity of operating models, combined with the sector’s entrepreneurial and organic growth, is one of the reasons that investors find it so attractive.

Co-living has developed into a spectrum of residential formats serving different demand cohorts, including young professionals, international and domestic students, project-based workers, tourists and, increasingly, corporate occupiers.

With the emergence of Commune on Henderson — a pioneering inter-generational co-living concept by TS Group and The Assembly Place (TAP) — it is even breaking down barriers between co-living and the traditional senior living sector. This also points to the broader social value the sector can deliver, helping to address challenges related to housing affordability, ageing and social isolation.

For investors and operators, this flexibility is highly attractive because it combines some of the revenue management characteristics of hospitality with more stable residential demand. Operators can capture rental growth more quickly while retaining the flexibility to protect occupancy during softer market conditions and avoid the seasonality associated with hotels.

Read also: Singapore investors ramp up bets on New Zealand living assets as reforms unlock institutional market

This adaptability has been critical in Singapore. Co-living has scaled through conversions, allowing operators to grow their portfolios in a market where land is scarce, stabilised residential assets are tightly held, and the tax and lending framework makes ground-up development or the acquisition of existing residential assets capital-intensive.

The listings of Coliwoo and The Assembly Place on the Singapore Exchange have provided the clearest public-market validations of the sector globally. The two companies have a combined market capitalisation of about $377 million as at January 2026, giving the sector greater visibility and establishing a precedent for accessing public capital markets.

Beyond conversions

Conversion will remain important, but it is unlikely to support the next phase of institutional growth on its own. The pool of viable conversion targets is narrowing.

Singapore’s hotel sector is performing strongly, with average room rates of $274 per night in 2025, compared with $221 before the pandemic, making hotel-to-co-living underwriting more challenging.

Deals tend to involve older or underperforming assets, expired master leases or other repositioning opportunities, rather than the wholesale replacement of operating hotels, as seen in Coliwoo’s recent acquisition of the vacant Park Avenue Changi.

However, Singapore cannot rely on conversions indefinitely, particularly if co-living is to play a larger role in the housing system.

Read also: No room on campus? Co-living steps up for students in Singapore

The demand fundamentals suggest there is scope for that expansion — indeed, they make a strong case for expanding the sector. Singapore has around 203,300 employment pass (EP) holders and approximately 95,000 student pass holders.

The number of overseas students has increased by 35% since 2023 and 42% since 2019. Yet Singapore has limited purpose-built student accommodation capacity, leaving most international students reliant on the private rental market.

Domestic demand is also becoming increasingly relevant. Singapore’s resident population has grown by 7.7%, or about 302,000 people, since 2015. Over the same period, the number of resident households increased by 21.4%, suggesting that housing demand is being driven not only by population growth, but also by smaller household sizes.

For some Singaporean singles in their late 20s and early 30s, co-living can bridge the gap between living with their parents and eventual home ownership. It offers independence, flexibility and professionally managed accommodation without the commitment of renting an entire private residential unit.

Affordability pressures further reinforce the need for a broader range of housing options. While the Ministry of Manpower does not publish median EP salaries, a reasonable estimate would place them at around $9,000 a month. With median rents for non-landed private homes hovering around $4,500 per month, housing costs can consume roughly half the gross income of a typical EP holder.

These pressures are unlikely to ease anytime soon. Private housing completions are projected to average about 9,100 units annually between 2025 and 2029, below the pre-pandemic five-year average of approximately 14,600 units. This suggests a continued role for professionally managed shared accommodation as part of Singapore’s broader housing ecosystem.

Policy support for growth 

Even in Singapore, one of Asia Pacific’s more mature co-living markets, the sector remains small. Based on bottom-up estimates of institutional and professionally managed co-living keys, operational supply is about 10,000 rooms, around 6% of the combined private non-landed and HDB rental stock of roughly 190,000 units as at the end of last year. If the sector is to make a more meaningful contribution to the housing mix, adaptive reuse and conversions cannot be the whole story.

This is where Singapore could potentially draw lessons from Australia. In New South Wales, for instance, co-living has benefitted from formal planning recognition under the Housing State Environmental Planning Policy. The framework provides a dedicated pathway for purpose-built rental accommodation featuring smaller private units, shared facilities, minimum-stay requirements and a 10% floor-space ratio bonus. The policy has helped accelerate co-living development across the state while increasing the average size of projects.

Singapore has taken a step in a similar direction with the pilot for SA2 (long-stay serviced apartments with a minimum stay of three months). While not co-living in name, it recognises several of the right principles by creating a planning framework for accommodation sitting between traditional residential leasing and hospitality.

A challenge for SA2 is that developers have strong incentives to pursue build-to-sell condos in a market where pricing and returns are attractive. Underwriting long-term rental income requires a different capital structure, return expectation and investment horizon.

The policy direction, nevertheless, suggests potential future support for co-living and, more broadly, professionally managed rental accommodation. Done carefully, such measures could diversify housing supply and provide a more sustainable response to demand than relying indefinitely on conversions.

Chart: Cushman & Wakefield Apac Living Survey 2026* (preliminary results)

From niche to mainstream

The question now is whether co-living can move beyond opportunistic conversions and become a mainstream housing option in Singapore. Targeted policy levers — whether through planning, tax treatment or land tender criteria — could shift the balance without dismantling the build-to-sell model that has served Singapore well.

One potential policy lever is a conditional additional buyer’s stamp duty remission framework for co-living operators and other professionally managed housing providers.

Australia and South Korea provide useful precedents for distinguishing professionally managed rental housing from conventional corporate ownership of residential property. In Australia, build-to-rent tax concessions are conditional on assets remaining under single ownership and being operated as professionally managed rental housing.

South Korea adopts a similar approach, offering tax incentives and regulatory relief for long-term rental housing held and managed under prescribed conditions.

Institutional capital is likely to back scalable platforms led by operators that can deliver strong occupancy, sustainable growth, affordability, flexibility and positive resident outcomes.

If these conditions are met, co-living could evolve from a niche segment into a mainstream component of Singapore’s housing ecosystem. Without them, the sector risks remaining constrained by the finite pool of assets available for conversion.