The Ultimate Guide to Running and Scaling Residential Communities — The Residential Community Builders Framework

As human beings, we have always lived in communities. Over the years, many societies however seem to have forgotten the value that building strong residential communities holds — both for the individuals and society.

Over the last few years, the pandemic has served as a powerful reminder on how much of a social creature we all really are. With resident needs today changing faster than ever, the hybrid work era dissolving the need of tying yourself up to an office location, as well as 2.5B Gen Z-er worldwide getting ready to enter the rental market at scale, tenant expectations have changed drastically.

This is putting the traditional residential living market under pressure. And with good locations being scarce, inflation roaring, and regular rent becoming increasingly unattainable, densification has become the name of the game — for city planners, and real estate developers alike. While this may seem like a questionable solution at first glance, the truth is that when done correctly, densification promises a considerable upside for everyone: the real estate developer, the operator of the building, the individual residents, and society at large (think enabling urbanizations, fighting loneliness and promoting sustainability).

But with fewer private spaces in densified, shared-format living, how to access and use the shared public spaces and connect, communicate and coordinate with your neighbors has become more important than ever. As a result, we also need to rethink how to bring residential communities to life in our densified buildings and cities. To solve this puzzle, new living models are needed, such as those that originated from alternative asset classes such as coliving, but are now spilling over into the conventional residential living models as well.

With this ultimate guide to building and scaling residential communities, we aim to provide a framework to those who understand that densification required a structural answer on how to bring those communities to life — and provide guidance on how to achieve that.

To do so, and following up on our work with our coliving podcast Rooftalks, we have identified the 50 most burning questions from residential operators on community building — and reached out to dozens of operators and thought leaders from within and outside the real estate industry to share their insights, experiences and learnings with us. The result: a comprehensive framework on building residential communities — soundly based on the learnings and experiences of those that have done it all.

We have structured this framework into 5 main parts, each with a clear focus on a different topic on how to create strong residential communities and will publish those over the coming weeks and months:

• Part 1 — Laying the right foundations for a vibrant community
• Part 2 — How to build a strong residential community
• Part 3 — How to unlock the business value of community
• Part 4 — How to measure your Community’s Success
• Part 5 — How to secure your competitive advantage with a residential community

It is our hope that by making this guide and therewith the learnings, insights, and good practices from the early adopters widely available we will enable you to understand yet another piece of the puzzle on how to densify your buildings, while at the same time also provide a living experience your tenants crave.

Sign-up here to receive each part of the guide right into your inbox, or watch this space as we get ready to publish part 1 — Laying the right foundations for a vibrant community here on Medium shortly.

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• About Michael: Michael is co-founder and CEO at Obeyo. Passionate about connecting people, he loves to explore ideas at the intersection between community, shared-living, and technology. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn.
• About Obeyo: Obeyo is the first all-in-one residential living platform built around the learnings from 100+ shared living operators.

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