Amazon’s HQ2 selection process featured an ensemble cast of recent troubling trends: the increasing and overwhelming economic dominance of Big Tech; the backlash against that dominance; middle America’s recent inability to compete with the coasts; broken political processes yielding disappointing yet predictable ends. No one — cities or taxpayers —…

Five years ago, I founded Common because I saw that the urban rental experience was broken. We started with coliving — a need I personally understood, and one where Common was able to create a better product for both owners and renters — but we always had an eye on…

Since we started Common five years ago, we’ve become the US’s largest operator of coliving apartments, with over 2,000 units open and more than 15,000 under development across 22 cities worldwide. As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to expand our vision, leveraging technology and operational know-how to improve tenant experience…

In June, we brought together over 300 real estate developers, investors, lenders, and architects for our first-ever Coliving Capital Markets Summit in New York. We followed it up with a second gathering in Los Angeles in October, and we recently announced our third Summit in Miami on February 28th. We…

Originally published on Forbes through the Forbes Real Estate Council. Co-living has been one of the top definitive real estate trends of 2019. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen major projects announced, billion-dollar funds being raised and top-tier developers diving in. However, this market of ours doesn’t exist in…

Originally published in New Cities Cities are increasingly unaffordable. Almost a million NYC renters are rent-burdened, with more than half of those renters paying more than 50% of their income in rent. Urban rents have been climbing faster than wages for decades, a trend that has only accelerated over the…

Since 2015, Common has opened 25 buildings in six markets, providing a convenient, friendly way for thousands of people to live in major urban centers. Demand has been overwhelming, as we now receive over 2,500 inbound applications per week. However, the single people and couples served by coliving today aren’t…

We are excited to share that Common has closed a $40M Series C financing round led by Norwest Venture Partners. In conjunction with this investment, we are also thrilled to welcome Jeff Crowe, Managing Partner at Norwest, to Common’s board of directors. In October 2015, we opened up our first…

I hate saying no. I particularly hate saying no to people who want to write about Common. But there’s one request that we get more than almost any other and decline every time: a request from a journalist to stay overnight in a Common home. We’ve never allowed it, and…