Co-Living and Flex Living Italie - Versus The Netherlands

Italy is discovering Living. The Netherlands is still trying to define it legally.

This is the fourth and final article in TEN's series Italy versus the Netherlands, comparing both housing markets across four themes: the housing market in general, student housing, senior housing and co-living.

Italy is not the first country that comes to mind for co-living, and that is understandable. Italians leave the parental home at around thirty on average; the family traditionally fulfilled a role that in Northern Europe is partly taken over by the housing market. But precisely that is beginning to change. Milan, Rome, Bologna and Florence attract international students, young professionals and workers, households are getting smaller and labour mobility is growing. A growing number of residents are looking for something between a hotel room and a permanent lease. That is where the Italian Living market is emerging.

The Capital Is Now Arriving

In the first half of 2025, around € 670 million was invested in the Italian Living sector, 118% more than a year earlier. The total Italian real-estate investment market reached around € 12,5 billion in 2025, 23% more than a year earlier; foreign capital accounted for around 58% of the total.

Living is therefore not yet a dominant asset class, but no longer an exotic niche either. Savills now describes co-living as a fast-growing European segment attracting institutional capital from parties such as BlackRock, APG and Realstar.

The Netherlands Leads Operationally

The Netherlands has long had professional concepts at the intersection of student housing, extended stay and co-living. Savills previously counted thirteen operational co-living schemes in the Netherlands, and the experience with student housing, short stay, serviced apartments, housing associations and institutional rental is substantial. The Netherlands should therefore be an ideal market for flex living.

But it is not. Regulation barely connects to the housing career of modern residents. Someone can work in Amsterdam for nine months, live in Utrecht for eighteen months after graduating, spend two years in Eindhoven for a multinational, look for temporary housing after a divorce or live in Rotterdam for a few years before buying a home. Yet the Dutch system wants to know almost immediately: are you a hotel guest or a tenant? An in-between product quickly leads to discussions about tenancy law, municipal registration, service charges, zoning plans, households, parking spaces and length of stay.

In doing so, the Dutch fit the real-estate product to the legal system, instead of fitting the legal system to the housing need.

Italy Opts for Conversion More Often

Italy has the same problem, but also many buildings that are losing their original function. Hotels, offices, religious real estate and other urban buildings are therefore becoming interesting for student housing and new Living products. The Italian student-housing programme also encourages making buildings available and converting them into student accommodation.

That is relevant, because co-living does not have to be new construction alone. Existing buildings with wide corridors, communal spaces, monumental structures and central urban locations can be particularly suitable for new living products.

But It Is Not a Mature Market Yet

There should be no pretence that Italy is ahead, because it is not. The professional Italian Living market is still in an early growth phase. Even in the first quarter of 2026, Living investment amounted to just € 162 million, with CBRE still pointing to limited availability of stabilised product and uncertainty in development pipelines.

The Netherlands has more operational experience. Italy currently has more room to shape a new market from scratch.

Who Does It Better?

The Netherlands wins on operational expertise, tenant protection, institutional rental, student housing and professional operators. Italy potentially wins on transformation, available real estate, international investor interest and the room to position new Living products quickly as a distinct asset class.

And there is one more important difference.

Italy Has an Enormous Missing Middle

An Italian leaves the parental home at an average age of 30,1, a Dutch person at 23,8. More than six years' difference. Italy therefore has an enormous potential audience for student housing, young-professional housing, co-living and flex living. Because not everyone who lives at home until thirty does so out of preference. Part of that group simply does so because the alternative is missing.

The Netherlands can make exactly the opposite mistake. The Dutch do have a history of early independent living, but by further shrinking the small and flexible rental market, the country may eventually move in the same direction. The private Dutch rental stock contracted in 2024 as private landlords in particular sold homes; on 1 January 2025 there were 22.000 fewer rental homes in private ownership than a year earlier. That removes precisely the segment where new households often start.

CBS figures show that of the 338.000 newly formed households in 2023, around 50% first ended up in the private rental sector. Only 19% started directly in an owner-occupied home. That figure tells the whole story: flexible rental is not a luxury, it is the start of the housing career.

The Lesson from Italy

Italy must build new forms of housing to let young people live independently earlier. The Netherlands must avoid dismantling the forms of housing that make exactly that possible.

For both countries, the solution lies in a more professional in-between category: Living. Furnished where needed, flexible where logical, with services when they are actually delivered, and with municipal registration and normal residents' rights. But without pretending that someone who lives somewhere for nine months needs exactly the same housing product as someone who wants to stay for twenty years.

The question is therefore not whether people must choose between buying or renting permanently. The housing market does not come in two flavours, because life does not either.

This is the fourth and final article in the TEN series Italy versus the Netherlands.

Main sources for the series: ISTAT , Eurostat , Banca d'Italia , OECD - OCDE , Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca, Italia Domani/PNRR, CBS, the Dutch central government, Nuffic, the Netherlands Court of Audit, Savills , CBRE , PwC and Colliers .