Spain-based proptech company Housfy has diversified into short- and medium-stay room rentals, according to its website.
The company is initially offering the service in the country’s two largest cities — Madrid and Barcelona (where it is headquartered). Its early goals are not particularly ambitious — it aims to rent 50 rooms through Housfy Coliving this year and to increase this figure to 750 a year by 2025.
For owners, Housfy Coliving offers a guaranteed fixed return of between 7% and 10%.
Housfy says it will will use matching algorithms to select tenants with the same characteristics. It will also offer virtual property tours and design and decoration services, with the latter “allowing a property to be ready in less than a week.”
“Coliving comes to the Housfy ecosystem of services to add one more solution to the existing ones and satisfy the needs of tenants looking for short-term rentals; for us it means completing the circle of leasing services that we offer: residential, seasonal (in the works) and coliving,” commented founder and CEO Albert Bosch.
Jordi Cid, global director of operations at Housfy, added, “Coliving is one of the trends that we have been observing since 2022 … we detected that the demand for this type of lease was growing significantly and we saw the need to optimize the provision of the service through our technology… Barcelona is a city of temporary transit for many students and workers who need a 100% equipped apartment, zero worries and a community to enjoy.”
An increasingly crowded field
Medium-term lettings are an increasingly crowded field in Spain, with the likes of Ukio, SpotAHome, BlueGround and Badi already involved in this segment.
In addition to digital nomads, the growing attractiveness of medium-term rentals in the country is attributable to the increased regulation of traditional long-term tenancies, with the country’s left-wing coalition government limiting rent increases to well below the rate of inflation and making it more difficult to evict tenants.
However, the regulatory framework could change once again in the aftermath of July’s general election (which was called earlier this week), particularly if, as polling suggests, the center-right Partido Popular returns to power.