Co-living buildings offer ‘attainable luxury' for Chicago's young professionals, students

Chicago Tribune

9 hours ago

Nestled in the heart of the Printer's Row district in the South Loop, Straits Row appears like any other high-rise in downtown Chicago. It has a modern interior design and high-end amenities that are standard for luxury housing in the area.
But the building has a feature that separates it from most such high rises in the city: Half of its units are co-living apartments, where tenants rent a single bedroom and share a kitchen and living room with other tenants. Rents at co-living buildings are often 20% to 30% below the market rate for a studio or one-bedroom in the same neighborhood.
Straits Row, at 633 S. LaSalle St., began leasing in February. The 18-story building has 132 units and 358 beds, with half the units traditional apartments and half co-living apartments. The bedrooms and living rooms are fully furnished, so residents new to the city can move in without bringing furniture. The building's amenities include a workspace, a gym, a pool and lounges.
The city has only a handful of co-living buildings, but the trend has grown in recent years, driven by high housing costs in urban areas, according to a report by market consulting firm Grand View Research. The global market size was $7.8 billion in 2024, and is expected to more than double to just over $16 billion by 2030, according to the report.
The model allows students and young professionals to live in popular neighborhoods without the high price tag of a traditional apartment or the headache of finding roommates, said Nick Melrose, founder and CEO of Melrose Ascension Capital. Melrose developed the building alongside Q Investment Partners, a Singapore-based firm that bought the site in 2019. At Straits Row, the rent for a single room in a four-bedroom starts at $1,699. That's well below the average studio apartment rent of $2,186 in Printer's Row, according to Rent.com.
'This gives them the option to live in an apartment that is a nice apartment — it gives a luxurious vibe at a lower cost,' said Madison Kerrigan, the building's property manager.
The location made it a great spot for co-living, Melrose said. It caters to students at several college campuses within a short radius, including DePaul University's Loop campus, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University. Multiple transit options nearby offer a quick commute for young professionals working downtown.
Three miles north in Lincoln Park, Post Chicago offers a similar setup, with 107 units that are mostly co-living. The building, at 853 W. Blackhawk St., is part of the Big Deahl, a 7-acre project by Structured Development that put up residential buildings on a site previously zoned for industrial buildings. The project also includes a 34-unit affordable condo building and a traditional apartment building.
J. Michael Drew, founding principal at Structured Development, said the firm pursued a co-living project to offer an affordable option in a hot neighborhood for young professionals. Beyond the standard amenities, Post Chicago also offers weekly cleaning for co-living tenants.
'Lincoln Park is the most desired neighborhood for incoming graduates who are entering the workforce,' he said. 'But it's one of the more expensive neighborhoods to find housing.'
For Manuel Carcamo, co-living was an easy choice as a student and when he was just starting his career. Although he lives in a studio now in Straits Row, Carcamo previously lived in two co-living units.
The first was as a student at the University of Indiana's Indianapolis campus, renting a room in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom unit. He wanted to live off campus but couldn't afford to live on his own, so co-living was a convenient option. Having roommates helped build social interactions and helped him explore the new city, he said.
'I moved to Indianapolis from Chicago having known nobody there,' he said. 'So moving into a four-bedroom apartment with three strangers, that was kind of daunting, but it did also work out for me, in terms of connecting me with some of my best friends.'
Those bonds Carcamo made have remained. This October, he said, he's officiating the wedding of one of his college roommates.
After college, Carcamo moved to Columbus, Ohio, and co-living was again a cheaper, convenient way to secure housing. This time, he lived in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-living apartment with one roommate.
'I think it's a great opportunity for people that are really looking to put their head down, get their start in their career, and try to figure out the city,' Carcamo said.
Now, Carcamo said, he prefers the privacy of a studio apartment. He works from home and having the comfort of his own space is the main reason he chose to live in a studio when he came back to Chicago. But he said he wouldn't rule out co-living again.
Melrose has three other buildings in development: A $90 million, 19-story building at 626 S. Wabash Ave. that has some co-living units, and two buildings in Fulton Market that are traditional apartments. Melrose said he wants to ensure all his buildings offer 'attainable luxury,' catering to a middle demographic that would have a hard time renting in much of downtown Chicago.
'We have opened up a demographic that would love to live here that couldn't otherwise afford to do it, until we built something like this,' Melrose said. 'That feels better to me than catering to some lawyer or doctor. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that's not what drives me.'
For developers and building owners, co-living can generate more income than a traditional building with the same number of units. Renting by the room allows developers to charge more per square foot than they could with a usual two- or four-bedroom apartment.
According to a 2020 report by Cushman & Wakefield, co-living can increase net operating income by an average of 15% because of the higher density, while offering lower rents.
Co-living buildings have slightly higher operating costs than traditional apartments, the report said. They often have shorter lease terms and more turnover, and Drew said having the right management is important to take advantage of those returns.
'As long as you're operating it efficiently and effectively, yes, the returns can be, and are proving to be, better than a conventional' property, he said.
But securing financing on a co-living project can be difficult. Straits Row was initially planned as an all-co-living building, and Melrose said there was some hesitancy from institutional lenders to finance the project, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the housing market. That led the developers to change the building to half co-living and half traditional.
'There's a market for 500 (co-living) beds, but with lenders, especially, who are the most conservative folks in our industry, it was the path of least resistance,' he said of the decision to put fewer co-living units in Straits Row. 'So that got lenders a lot more interested.'
Drew said at Post Chicago, there was less hesitancy from lenders about the co-living model. He said the rising rent environment means lenders understand the demand for lower-cost alternatives.
'The attraction to a lender is that they recognize the ability to push rents and to be able to take advantage of a market when you're in a rising rent environment,' he said.
Co-living has seen significant growth in the last decade, especially in high-cost cities such as New York and San Francisco. According to the Cushman & Wakefield report, there were fewer than 100 co-living beds available in 2014 in North America. That grew to more than 7,000 by the end of 2019.
Gail Lissner, an appraiser and managing director for Integra Realty Resources, said some of the earliest co-living buildings in Chicago were smaller apartment buildings that were repurposed. One example was a three-flat in Lincoln Park that was turned into a 12-bedroom co-living building.
As the model gained traction, interest from developers and lenders led to larger, new-construction buildings such as Straits Row and Post Chicago that looked more like luxury housing. Now, renters can find large, modern co-living buildings in Pilsen, the South Loop, the Near West Side, Lincoln Park and elsewhere.
Co-living isn't likely to take over the Chicago housing scene, but experts said it's an underserved market that is likely to remain strong as rents continue to rise. Lissner said co-living buildings operate best near big employers and universities.
'I think they belong in certain locations,' she said. 'They belong in the downtown market where you have the employment. They work well where you have universities. So we tend to see them clustered a little bit more there.'
Part of the challenge of operating a complex with co-living apartments is making sure renters know about it, Melrose said. It's easier to recruit students, who are used to dorm-style living, but Melrose said he thinks the renter base of young professionals will grow as they become more accustomed to that style of living.
Kerrigan, the building's property manager, is active in Chicago housing Facebook groups and online forums to pitch Straits Row to people looking for an affordable option downtown. The complex also partners with universities and corporations to market itself to prospective city residents.
'A lot of it is building partnerships and just making sure that Straits Row is known as the newest co-living spot,' Kerrigan said. 'We do sometimes have to explain what co-living is, but once we explain that, people seem to really like it.'