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Hong Kong property
Business

This Hong Kong start-up gives flat owners a hassle-free way to tap the co-living trend

  • coliving.hk wants to make it possible for individual flat owners to rent their homes as co-living spaces
  • The online platform targets young people seeking housing shared with a small number of tenants

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Tech entrepreneur and co-founder of coliving.hk Michelle Chau Wang-yu. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Lam Ka-sing

In crowded Hong Kong, co-living operators have made good business matching the needs of renters and landlords around shared living concepts involving big spaces.

But a new entrant, which went live earlier this month, is seeking to push into an area that has so far been overlooked: helping young people source housing in flats shared with a small number of tenants.

Michelle Chau Wang-yu, one of four co-founders of the Chinese-language website coliving.hk, which went live on March 6, says her company focuses on managing flats with as few as two bedrooms throughout communities in the city. In some instances that even means arranging for complete strangers to share a bedroom within a flat.
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“We received a dozen registrations within one day after launching the service,” Chau said, referring to prospective renters. “We will then spend four to six weeks to do selection and matching.”

On the landlord side of the equation, Chau said her start-up offers full management services, from renovation to tenant placement and day-by-day oversight of the property.

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Chau said the company matches flatmates based on preferences, provides cleaning, and helps guide new tenants as they move in.

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