In this interview, GROWE Co-owner Lodewijk van Grootel describes their proven approach to coliving property management and operations, as well as how they empower clients to deliver outstanding resident experiences.
The concept of coliving has often been introduced as “housing 2.0.” As a newer form of housing, coliving comes with its own challenges in terms of managing the property, creating a digitalization strategy, and optimizing revenue.
In this interview, GROWE Co-owner Lodewijk van Grootel describes their proven approach to coliving property management and operations, as well as how they empower clients to deliver outstanding resident experiences.
I am the owner of GROWE Property Management, which I started in 2023 together with Stefan Wetselaar after several years of working in hospitality management, large purpose-built student accommodation, and coliving for young professionals in Amsterdam.
We focus on companies such as property owners and architects that need an operational partner’s perspective. Where we really add value is when we get started even two years before the actual delivery of the building. That's when the biggest decisions are being made in terms of both division and programming of the building, but also very practical operational things like reviewing logistics, key planning, and property services.
By building in efficiency we can also make coliving available for properties of any scale because they can all plug into the model that we already have. We can operate from a distance while being onsite for the moments that matter most: move-out, a maintenance ticket, a property walk, a community event, those kinds of things.
We put the hospitality component in every process we have in the company. From requesting and solving a maintenance ticket to bringing in new tenant prospects. We want to have all those processes as lean as possible and keep tenants up to date and manage expectations as much as possible.
This is how we are very different, both our hospitality approach and our efficient lean approach where the tenant knows exactly what they can expect from us.
And finally, by being involved so early in the project, we tackle those things that we already know are the biggest hassles in the first month after opening, way ahead of time.
What we usually do is have a quick scan of a property where we have an overall check on floor plans that were already drafted. A quick scan of the P&L also, so a 10-year budget to see: what kind of service costs are going to be involved for the tenant? What kind of costs will there be for the landlord? What kind of optimizations can we do for both?
When opening a property, we have a preset opening checklist that we created based on our experience, because there are a lot of small things that can together become a very big thing if overlooked.
We go systematically through every aspect of the opening of a building: facility, leasing, technical administration, marketing, and so on to create a smooth opening with the best resident experience.
We’ve been looking for the holy grail for a long time, the perfect system that combines the property management system, community app, building services…and we found that the ideal world is not there just yet. I do think we are slowly getting there.
What we always do is check what our client considers to be most important. Will property services such as smart parcel boxes need to be connected? Does the property owner require reporting on resident satisfaction?
Then we find the right systems to see which ones fit there. And this is not just about a tenant app like Spaceflow, but also what kind of property management system (PMS) it can be connected to. It's a big puzzle with a lot of things that don’t always connect.
Even though the perfect combination is not here yet, I have a lot of confidence that we are starting to get there. There is a lot of development in both community apps, PMSs, and property services.
The coliving market is emerging so quickly with a lot of new players coming on the market, especially from building services, that I think there's now a shared goal for them to start working together. I think this is our goal for the next few years, together with providers like Spaceflow and Wunderbricks who have already been pushing for it.
The first thing is to simplify the back office work. By automating a lot of that work, you can also attract a different kind of team. You don't really need an administrator thanks to automation, so you can instead hire a more hospitality-minded person.
The innovation of putting together those property services that I was talking about before, that all needs to be prepared correctly in a building because it's difficult to implement them afterward, similar to a mobile access system that needs a lot of preparation way before launch. That is why we ask those questions at a very early stage.
There is a bit of a risk that people start treating coliving properties too much like a hotel, because a hotel can be a bit more anonymous and a coliving property should be somebody's home, right? Those shared spaces should basically be the extension of somebody's living room. But of course there's overlap there in the way of managing it.
Having the hospitality mindset when working in coliving helps because it’s important to know your residents, but you do need to switch things around a little bit because the way you communicate with tenants must be very different from the way you communicate with hotel guests. Somebody is stepping into their home, so for one thing the communication is much less formal.
You have a lot of ways to activate a community. I think the biggest mistake is to push it too much from the community manager. Ideally, you always involve residents in organizing something within the community.
It's good to not just randomly organize something, but to really have a vision behind it. For example, if you plan a healthy activity or an educational thing, by involving residents in the organization it will not feel like a mandatory activity. I see that more and more coliving properties are getting used to this way of doing it.
As far as tracking, it's good to measure satisfaction after each contact that you have with the resident, for example: after a maintenance ticket is resolved, after a move-in, and randomly after an event. This is, I think, the best way to see and measure exactly what is going on.
There are many ways to make it easy for them to fill out such a questionnaire, just by using stars or only one or two questions. And by actively following up on that, people also notice that you're not just doing it to check off a list, but somebody's actually reading those reviews and acting on them.
Something that I think is well done within the Spaceflow app is connecting multiple spaces or services within the one app. Optimizing revenue is more about seeing what kind of services you can add. Renting storage units, renting a bicycle, reserving a parking spot, booking a meeting room, all those kinds of things enhance the resident experience and create revenue in return.
A lot of traditional investors look at commercial income and parking income and that's it, whereas in coliving properties, there's a lot more you can add that is convenient for the tenant and will give revenue in return. All these small things will make the difference between a traditional apartment building and a coliving property.
Don’t be afraid to constantly measure resident satisfaction. This is something that is usually only done for shareholder reasons, but actually, if you actively measure it and do something with it, the whole ambiance in your building will be so much better.
You will not just be the landlord that they're paying their rent to, you will be actively contributing to their comfort and convenience, and they will feel they have real influence.
Join our mailing list
