Overview of the co-living market in Lithuania
2023 07 18The article was published in Lithuanian business news website “Verslo Žinios”
It doesn’t matter which segment you are targeting – shared housing or traditional rental, even in the challenging 2022 institutional investors have been doing well, which is evidenced by their financial results, rising rents, and future plans.
“Verslo Žinios” analyzed financial results of companies that rented housing in Vilnius for the first time in 2022.
[…]
The first year is profitable
In 2022 after opening its first developed student housing project in Vilnius “Shed Co-living” in the autumn, the “European Student Housing Fund” recorded 100% occupancy, and its operator “Shed Vilnius“, which has been operating for less than a year, recorded a turnover of EUR 377,092. The first year of its operation was profitable.
Matas Mockeliūnas, partner of the fund, says that in general the year of 2022 was good, because the fund managed to increase the portfolio twice by opening communal housing projects in the capitals of Lithuania and Latvia.
“We successfully completed the construction and opened new locations to the market, and there was a lot of interest in them, so we started the school year with high occupancy in all student houses. I think that the customers like the community we are creating, the living conditions, security, and the care of the team, which is why a large number of them extend their contracts for the 2023 academic year as well,” M. Mockeliunas comments the current situation.
Currently, people from more than 30 different countries live across two locations in Lithuania and Latvia.
Although the results of 2022 were good M. Mockeliūnas says that the biggest challenge was to control the rising costs due to the energy crisis, as customers were promised a fixed rental price.
“We also succeeded in managing financial risks to fix interest rates at the right time and avoid additional costs due to the rise of EURIBOR,” he says.
According to M. Mockeliūnas, rental pricing in managed projects is reviewed every year, taking into account the inflation and the competitive environment.
“We have adjusted the pricing accordingly for the new season. On average the rental price rose by about 8-12%, depending on the type of rooms, length of stay and other factors,” he says.
When asked about portfolio expansion plans, he says that the “European Student Housing Fund” is mostly focused on development in Poland, where the market is much larger than in Vilnius.
Related articles:
More about SHED Living projects
More about the Student Housing fund
Share