Could Co-Living Solve the Housing Crisis? With Matt Hutchinson – RFP 50 Transcript
Matt Hutchinson (00:00): If you look across all the major metro areas in the US, apart from three of them, they’ve all had record high rents in the last two quarters of this year. And that doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down. The problem with rental increases like that is they may level off after a while, but they never come back down as quickly as they’ve gone up. So you get this point where rents shoot up, then they plateau, and then they go up again from there. You never really see rents fall that much. One of the big issues with that is we’re now finding people telling us that they’re worried about moving. People are turning down career opportunities. People are turning down life opportunities because they’re worried about the cost of rent. And that’s not how housing should work. That’s not what it’s for. Housing should be there as a safe, comfortable, secure space that we all then use as a platform to live whatever version of a productive life we want. At the moment, housing has become a real hindrance for people, I think.
Gordon Lamphere (01:01): Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to The Real Finds Podcast, the podcast that interviews key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we’ll be speaking with Matt Hutchinson. Matt is the Communications Director at SpareRoom. SpareRoom is now the world’s leading flatshare site. Since 2004, SpareRoom has helped over 14 million people in the UK and US find homes. Our discussion touches on the housing crisis, the changing demographics of those seeking shared living arrangements, and cultural shifts toward co-living. It’s well worth a listen. Matt, thanks for hopping on the podcast today.
Matt Hutchinson: Hey, nice to meet you.
Gordon Lamphere: So why spare rooms? Why auxiliary real estate? What got you interested?
Matt Hutchinson (01:54): It’s a gap that we spotted in the UK, really. That’s where this all started. Going back to the end of the nineties and early two thousands, it was so hard to find places to live. People were putting notes up in shop windows, people were advertising in local newspapers, and by the time you saw those ads, the room had probably gone, and you’d be in the phone box calling people and desperately trying to go and see places. Most of what we do was coming online around that time, and we thought it made sense to put this on the web, because everything’s in real time, there’s access to much more information, and that’s what people needed.
The Housing Crisis on Both Sides of the Atlantic
Gordon Lamphere (02:30): Do you think this falls into the broader housing crisis? I’m sitting on panels and working with all sorts of communities in this area, and there seems to be a real housing crisis, even beyond looking at the data. Everybody you talk to who’s my age or younger (I’m a peak millennial) is struggling to find housing. Are you seeing that in the UK as well?
Matt Hutchinson (02:55): Yeah, absolutely. It’s scary how similar the patterns are in the UK and the US, even though the markets are very different and we have different attitudes to homeownership and things like that. Renters are struggling, and rents are at record highs across the UK and the US.
Gordon Lamphere (03:10): So what do you think is contributing to this?
Matt Hutchinson (03:14): I think there are a lot of factors. Particularly in the UK, we don’t build enough houses anymore. In the US, there are so many different challenges, including the amount of existing stock that has gone to things like Airbnb and holiday lets. You think of that as a problem in some of the more rural places, but it’s happening in cities now too, and cities are starting to do something about it. They’re realizing that so many apartments are being let out to travelers where they used to be residential. So there’s a lack of supply all round, and that really isn’t helping.
How SpareRoom Works
Gordon Lamphere (03:47): Go into a little more depth on how your platform works to solve some of this crisis.
Matt Hutchinson (03:56): It’s really simple. It’s a solution for people who have space they need to fill and people looking for somewhere to live to meet each other and interact. It’s not anything more than an introduction service, really, because that’s what people need. The most important thing when you’re living with people is the people. If you look through a bunch of listings, it’s going to be a bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers in a bedroom. That’s fine. The amenities are interesting, how much it costs is important, and the area is important. But the key thing is who you’re going to be spending the next twelve months living with. So the platform allows people to share information about themselves: what they’re looking for, what kind of person they are, and what kind of sharing situation they want, because that’s what makes the difference in the long term.
Gordon Lamphere (04:40): Can you dive into that a little more? What are people typically looking for in a roommate?
Matt Hutchinson (04:47): The things that come up over and over again are similar approaches to cleanliness, similar values, and similar ideas about what kind of shared apartment they’re looking for. That’s the key thing. People say so-and-so is the ideal roommate, but there’s no such thing, really. My ideal roommate and yours might be totally different. I talked to somebody yesterday who said, “My roommate’s amazing. We cook together, we eat together, we have a glass of wine and watch a box set together.” And I talked to somebody the same day who said, “My roommate’s brilliant. I never see him.” Both of those are equally valid ways to want to live. We would definitely come down on the side of interacting with your roommates, because it can be a brilliant experience, but some people just don’t want that. So knowing what you want is the thing.
Gordon Lamphere (05:32): How did SpareRoom address the crisis by connecting people? Do you think connection is the key driver, or is the driver something else?
Matt Hutchinson (05:46): I think connection is really important. However much we’d like to brand SpareRoom as being all about wonderful shared experiences, the real driver is that people come to us looking for accommodation in a certain location at a certain budget. That’s what brings them in. But our job is to sell the benefits of sharing and explain how great it can be. If you meet the right three people and share an apartment, it can change your life and it can be the best year you ever had. If you don’t, it can be a really tricky year. Our job is to make sure people have the good years.
The Fastest Growing Group of Roommates: Over 50
Gordon Lamphere (06:19): So who are the folks using SpareRoom? I like to imagine it’s like Friends, the show in New York, with a lot of younger people coming in. Is that who your user base predominantly is?
Matt Hutchinson (06:35): Our users would be delighted if they lived in apartments that nice. But yes, it’s exactly what you’d imagine in terms of twenties and thirties, young professionals. The interesting thing is there’s a big chunk of roommates who are older than that as well. Although the core market is twenties and thirties, the over fifties are the fastest growing part of the market. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. Some people are renting and sharing for longer because, as you say, there’s a housing crisis. And it’s not just a crisis of housing availability. It’s an affordability crisis. That’s the main thing. Even when there is stock available, people being able to afford these ever increasing rents is so difficult. So there are lifetime renters and lifetime roommates on one side of that. On the other side, there are people coming out of a job change or a long term relationship, looking around to rent a studio or a one bed, seeing how much that’s going to cost, and going, “Well, there’s no way I can do that.” So they’re ending up in an apartment share, maybe for the first time in their lives, in their fifties or even sixties.
Gordon Lamphere (07:38): Why do you think that over fifty demographic is growing so quickly? Do you think there are societal factors involved, or is it just what you mentioned?
Matt Hutchinson (07:52): I think it’s affordability. That’s the key to all of this. If you look across all the major metro areas in the US, apart from three of them, they’ve all had record high rents in the last two quarters of this year. That doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down. The problem with rental increases like that is they may level off after a while, but they never come back down as quickly as they’ve gone up. So you get this point where rents shoot up, then they plateau, and then they go up again from there. You never really see rents fall that much. There was a bit of that during the pandemic, because there were so many empty rooms and people weren’t able to move. But largely, rents go up and rents keep going up. Four or five years ago we looked at rents across the US and thought, “Realistically, how much higher can they go?” And they’ve gone higher, and higher again. That’s the problem.
One of the big issues with that is we’re now finding people telling us that they’re worried about moving. They might have been somewhere for two or three years, their rent hasn’t gone up, and they look at a similar space and it might cost them three, four, or five hundred dollars a month more. So people say, “I can’t afford that, and I don’t want that stress.” Then people are turning down job offers, career opportunities, and life opportunities because they’re worried about the cost of rent. That’s not how housing should work. That’s not what it’s for. Housing should be there as a safe, comfortable, secure space that we all then use as a platform to live whatever version of a productive life we want. At the moment, housing has become a real hindrance for people, I think.
Housing, Labor, and Living Where You Work
Gordon Lamphere (09:35): I talk to Fortune 500 folks all day long about the issues they’re having with their labor supply, and the biggest driver of all is housing. For anybody who’s interested in societal development, cultural growth, and economic well-being for everyone, having that base is absolutely necessary. Have you seen any corporate involvement in your platform, or is it predominantly individuals meeting individuals?
Matt Hutchinson (10:09): It’s individuals meeting individuals. There are also landlords and brokers who get involved. What we’re seeing more of is the rise of the build-to-rent model and co-living spaces: purpose-built blocks of apartments that are built not to sell but to hold on to and rent out. That’s definitely increased. And we’ve occasionally heard rumblings of corporates talking about investing in housing just so they have somewhere to put people. Post pandemic, we have this interesting scenario where, in theory, a lot of people can live anywhere. People don’t necessarily need to live in the major metro areas anymore because there’s so much remote working. But all of the big employers, like hospitals, universities, and the military, are physical places you need to be, and they employ a lot of people between them. Some people think we’ve progressed to a point where living where you work is no longer important. But for so many people, it really is.
Gordon Lamphere (11:10): I think the pandemic put this de-emphasis on cities, on the whole idea that you didn’t need to go into work, and there is some truth to that. Flexibility is important and hybrid work is important, but where we live is essential, for a variety of reasons, at both the workforce and the cultural level. What are you seeing in terms of who’s using the platform, and where in the world? Who’s most interested in using SpareRoom?
Homeowners Renting Out a Room
Matt Hutchinson (11:47): It’s predominantly young professionals living in major urban areas. That’s always going to be the bulk of it. But something we’ve had a lot of in the UK, and it’s definitely happening in the US as well, is homeowners renting out a room to a roommate. The interesting thing about that is it’s spread out all across the country, in small towns and big towns. Particularly in the last two or three years, the cost of owning a home has rocketed, and people are worried about the cost of living on all fronts. There’s a slight fallacy that once you buy a property, you’re sorted. Buying a property is expensive. Getting the funds together is expensive. Maintaining it is expensive. A lot of people are finding that rather than take a second job or look for a pay rise, renting out a room and getting somebody else in to help is one of the easiest solutions in many ways.
There are millions of empty rooms out there. People have been encouraged for a long time to overconsume property, and there are lots of reasons why that makes sense for people. You invest your money in it, and it’s a good place to keep your money. But it also means there’s a lot of spare capacity out there. If just a few percent of people rented out their spare rooms, you’d create capacity for a fairly major city, spread out all over the country. It’s a really useful solution because it doesn’t require a single brick to be laid. It uses capacity that already exists, and it helps the people living in those homes afford them.
Gordon Lamphere (13:23): We’ve had a substantial amount of discussion on this podcast about how builders tend to build to the max on every single site. If a site can be constructed as a five bedroom house, it’s often in the builder’s interest to make it a five bedroom house, even though most people today don’t have the family size and structure that requires five bedrooms. Are you seeing homeowners renting out rooms as a growing share of use in both the UK and the US, or is there still a tremendous amount of room to grow?
Matt Hutchinson (14:00): There’s definitely a lot of capacity for that. Sometimes our attitudes to what home is lag slightly behind the way we use property. People are very attached to houses that look traditional and this classic storybook idea of a house. For a lot of people, a modern two or three bed apartment is going to be far better for their needs, far easier to run, far better insulated, and so on. But we have romantic notions about home, I think, and people do want a house with a yard. So cultural expectations play into this as well.
Particularly in the UK, and maybe not so much in the US, we pride ourselves on being a nation of homeowners. We have the phrase “an Englishman’s home is his castle,” and it’s ground into you that if you don’t buy a home, you’ve somehow failed. So young renters in the UK carry a huge burden of guilt as well as a huge burden of affordability. I don’t get the sense that it’s quite the same in the US. There’s a lower rate of homeownership in the major cities than there is in London, for example. But having your own space and being able to live life the way you want is really important to people. If you’ve bought a two bed apartment and you’re living on your own, you can get a roommate in and make some money. If you don’t want to give up your privacy all the time, have somebody in, and when they move out, take a break. It’s part of this flexible way we use our homes these days. They reflect modern living.
Privacy, Isolation, and Connection
Gordon Lamphere (15:35): Talking about cultural expectations within the home, what are you seeing in how your users perceive the relationship, in terms of things like privacy? I know many people who have considered renting out part of their home but are scared to lose that privacy. What are you seeing in terms of people’s expectations of co-living?
Matt Hutchinson (16:02): It’s really interesting, because I think that is a cultural thing. Since the eighties and nineties, we’ve all been conditioned to think about being self sufficient and being individuals, the idea that everybody’s separate and in it for themselves. You were talking before about the post pandemic idea that we can all be completely separate and just Zoom into everything. That’s true, but at the same time, going into an office or being around people is something that, once you’ve experienced not being able to do it for a while, you realize just how important those little interactions are.
You do lose some privacy if people move into your home. That’s true, but you also gain a lot, and it’s about choosing the right person. I was talking to someone about this the other day. He’d ended up in a house he had intended to live in with his partner, they’d separated, and he was living on his own, so he rented out a room. He’d come home from work, look up, see the light on in the kitchen, and think, “They’re in. I’m going to have to talk to them. This is awful.” After about three or four weeks of this, he’d come home, see the light on, and think, “Brilliant, somebody’s in, somebody to talk to.” He just hadn’t realized how lonely you can get living on your own. Particularly if you live in a city, you’ve maxed out your affordability on a studio or a one bed, you can’t really afford to go out, and you’re remote working and not seeing your colleagues, all of a sudden you can end up incredibly isolated, even in the middle of a city of fifteen million people. I’ve probably wandered slightly off topic there, but it’s all those little touch points of connectivity in how we live, both as individuals and as communities, that I think people are starting to value again.
Gordon Lamphere (17:57): No, I’d like to dive back into that. What do you see folks valuing in terms of these micro connections? Are there particular success stories that you think are driving the platform and its usage?
Matt Hutchinson (18:11): I think it’s important for us to show the range of success stories there are, because that can be one of the things people don’t see. Like you were saying, people have the idea that apartment sharing is all like Friends. It is, but it’s also like The Golden Girls. You can name a sitcom and it’s like that. It’s amazing how many sitcoms take place in rented apartments, because they’re a great location. So much happens in them. There’s so much life and so much interaction. People would be amazed if they saw the range of ages of people who live together. There are people in their twenties sharing with people in their sixties or seventies. There are people whose kids have all left home, who have a lot of space but not much income, and who are lonely and want a bit of company or some help around the house.
We hear all the time from people who met through SpareRoom because they moved in together and ended up, ten years later, getting married. There are children who exist in the world because their parents met through a SpareRoom ad. All of those little connections that we don’t necessarily see, that’s what I see as a success story, rather than the numbers or the growth. Helping people have that kind of experience when they live together is extraordinary. We probably don’t see most of it after the fact, but those are the success stories we love to hear about.
The Financial Driver and the Hidden Benefits
Gordon Lamphere (19:44): Beyond those cultural success stories, the economic success story is that there’s often unused capital in the market. What do you see in terms of individuals using their homes? Are they using SpareRoom almost entirely as independent landlords, or primarily for that cultural connection?
Matt Hutchinson (20:10): The main driver is always going to be financial. If you’re renting out a room or living in a shared apartment, the main driver is affordability. But it’s all the other stuff that comes with it. Homeowners renting out a room, or people who live on their own and take a roommate, are often a little reluctant at first: “I might lose my privacy. What if it doesn’t work?” And we hear from so many people who say, “I was quite reluctant to do this, but having done it a couple of times, I wouldn’t live here on my own anymore.” That’s because of company and being able to share the financial burden, but also little things you wouldn’t think about, like having somebody to feed your cat while you’re away, or knowing your house isn’t empty while you’re on holiday. Some people even say that compared with being alone in the house at night, knowing somebody else is sleeping down the hallway makes them feel safer at home. There are all these little benefits that aren’t the key drivers for people doing it, but they add up to stories we wouldn’t have anticipated when we started. We think about location and budget and all of that, but all these little human connections and touch points we hear about are the fascinating side of it, I think.
Gordon Lamphere (21:32): Human touch points really do drive things, particularly as they build into networks. Have you seen the platform become useful for networking? Is there a network within SpareRoom of people having multiple SpareRoom connections, or is it typically a one-off interaction?
Matt Hutchinson (21:56): One of the challenges of running a service like ours is that people are probably only going to be in the market for it once a year, and we never know when that will be. They go through an intense period of three or four weeks of finding a roommate or a room, and then they disappear from view for quite a while. But it’s the connections that start. We’ve heard stories of people who met and ended up starting businesses together. People move in with one person, meet their friends, and that becomes a whole new social or business network, or they meet their partner through their roommate’s friend. You’re not just meeting one or two people. You’re meeting one or two people, and then this whole Venn diagram of overlapping connections opens up. That’s not unique to sharing housing. That’s just the way life works. But we live in an age where so many of those connections happen through our phone screens, tapping and swiping. If you look at dating, the vast majority of relationships now start online, where they used to start through meeting your work colleagues’ friends or your friends’ friends. I think people crave a bit of that again: more organic ways of connecting with people.
The Final Four: Where Real Estate Goes in Ten Years
Gordon Lamphere (23:20): Talking about craving organic things, one of the things we always crave is getting to our final four and learning a little more about you and how you view the world of real estate. The first question, one of my favorites: where do you see real estate going in ten years?
Matt Hutchinson (23:37): It’s fascinating, because we get so caught up in short term thinking. My sister-in-law works for a cathedral, and she has a phrase, “cathedral thinking.” It’s not about what’s going to happen this year or next quarter. It’s about what the effects of what I do now will be on this space in a hundred years’ time. It’s extraordinary, because nobody thinks like that anymore. In some ways, very little might change in the real estate market in ten years. There might be new tech and new ways of dealing with things, but it may all be pretty much as it is. One thing I suspect will change, not just in US and UK cities but around the world, is that people will start to question whether using so much existing stock for short term lets is the best way forward. If things carry on the way they are, residential real estate is going to become thinner and thinner on the ground, and we will need it more and more. So I think that’s a big conversation over the next ten years. We might find ourselves in a very different place there than we are now.
Gordon Lamphere (24:39): We’ve talked with several people who might come on the podcast soon, in New Orleans as well as a number of other cities that have had major crises from overusing Airbnbs and then stepped back in how they regulate them. Do you see SpareRoom coming into conflict with that, or do you think municipalities will view it as an entirely different kind of platform?
Matt Hutchinson (25:10): I certainly hope it’s viewed differently, because we’re exclusively looking for people to be able to live somewhere on a long term, residential basis. We don’t offer lets of a day or a week. That’s just not what we do. It’s about using housing better and using it more, but purely for residential. That’s the important thing.
Advice for Young Professionals: Trust Your Instincts
Gordon Lamphere (25:28): One of the things we like to do, which we think is important, is take a step back in time. We have a lot of listeners who are under thirty-five, some in their twenties, trying to figure out their way in the real estate world. If you could give one tidbit of advice, what would it be?
Matt Hutchinson (25:57): Don’t be afraid to trust your instincts. When you’re younger, you presume that everybody else knows and you don’t. And it’s true that you can’t replace experience. But we all have our own ways of approaching things, and it’s important to trust what you bring to it as well. I look back on the amount of time and energy I spent thinking, “I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m doing.” And some of the things I’m most proud of are things I did because I felt they were the right thing to do, and they were the important steps to take, even when perceived wisdom would have been “don’t do that.” Not just for yourself as an individual, but for your organization, you need to have a little bit of faith that you know what you’re doing.
Gordon Lamphere (26:44): Can you dig into that in regard to SpareRoom? Was there a time you had to dig in and double down on something?
Matt Hutchinson (26:53): There are a couple of things, really. One is that SpareRoom has no investors. We took no venture capital, and we have no shareholders other than the people who own the company. It’s been a struggle at times, but we’ve built the company by reinvesting money. It’s not the way you’re supposed to do things these days. It’s much easier to take a load of money and spend it really quickly. It’s been an interesting journey, but I think it’s been the right course for us.
Also simple things: we have a huge customer service team. You can find our phone number and call us, or you can email us. You can chat on the site as well, but if you want to talk to a human being for help, we do that. It costs us a lot of money and it’s a big investment, and I’m sure we’d be more profitable in immediate terms without it. But we believe it’s a better service, it will perform better, and people will use it more if we make it human. We’re all slightly in love with real estate, but we all hate moving house. If we can make people’s lives slightly easier while they do that, they’ll appreciate it. Having somebody to talk to who can answer a question is a really basic, important thing for a business. So many online businesses farm out their customer service to forums and AI chat, and that just doesn’t feel right for us.
Gordon Lamphere (28:21): Do you think that goes to the nature of real estate in general, how emotional, personal, and intimate it is? Is that where that drive comes from?
Matt Hutchinson (28:32): I think so. It’s very emotional, but it can also be really high pressure. I mentioned that people might only need SpareRoom once a year for two or three weeks, but those are a pretty frantic two or three weeks for a lot of people, especially now, with a lack of available property and such high prices. And when you live with roommates, you’re not only making a financial decision. You’re basically going on a first date and then having to move in. It’s an important time in people’s lives, and the more we can do to make it stress free, the better.
Book Recommendation: Four Thousand Weeks
Gordon Lamphere (29:12): Speaking of stress-free things, one of our favorite stress-free ways to gain knowledge and perspective on the world is through books. So we ask every guest: what’s a book listeners should pick up?
Matt Hutchinson (29:30): This isn’t a business book, and it’s not a real estate book. It’s called Four Thousand Weeks, written by a British journalist, Oliver Burkeman. It’s basically a book about time management that isn’t about time management. He’s a journalist who spent years writing about productivity, reading the books, and trying all the systems. He came to the conclusion that the problem isn’t that we’re not productive enough. It’s that there’s just too much to do. So the main premise is accepting our limits, accepting the limits of time, and actively choosing not to do most things so you can do the things that are important. You might have a list of twenty-five priorities, and the first three are your top priorities, and the others are not priorities at all.
It’s an extraordinarily liberating and really human way of looking at it: it’s not my fault that I can’t do everything; modern life is way too hectic. So you choose the things that matter to you, stick with them, and stop worrying about FOMO and the guilt of the seventeen things you’re not doing at any given moment, because whatever you’re doing, by default, means you’re not doing everything else. When I first read it, having it laid out in those terms took a weight off. I reread it every six months now, underlining bits to remind myself. It’s not taking a weight off in the sense of “don’t worry, you’re not responsible for your life.” It’s saying you are, and that makes it even more important to choose what matters to you. I found it an extraordinary read.
Gordon Lamphere (31:08): That sounds phenomenal. As somebody who’s in brokerage, real estate, and development, and who works with so many people who are, there’s always another call you can make. There’s always another something. So I think that’s a phenomenal read, and I’d love to bring it up.
Who Should Be Our Next Guest?
Gordon Lamphere: One phenomenal thing we find about this podcast is that the men and women in the arena are the best connectors to the next voice we should have on. Who should be that next voice?
Matt Hutchinson (31:46): It’s interesting, because I’m going to recommend somebody I haven’t actually spoken to, but whom I discovered recently. There’s a woman called Annamarie Pluhar who runs a website called sharinghousing.com. She’s a passionate advocate for taking people in and renting out your spare room. She’s been doing it for years, and she runs a nonprofit to encourage other people to do the same. She’s got a book, which I’ve just read, and I’m going to reach out and talk to her at some point. She sounds fascinating, because she has years of experience doing this. I think she sounds like a really interesting figure.
How to Reach Matt Hutchinson
Gordon Lamphere (32:23): We’d love to have her on. There’s one last question we like to ask, and it’s an important one. Matt, what’s the best way for listeners to get in touch with you if they want to reach out after the podcast?
Matt Hutchinson (32:39): Just go to spareroom.com if you want to learn more about SpareRoom. If you want to contact me, you can email [email protected], and that will come through to me. It’s always great to connect if people have things they want to discuss or want to talk about some of the things we’ve covered. I’d love to hear from them.
Gordon Lamphere (32:54): Matt, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today. We have to have you on again in the future.
Matt Hutchinson (32:58): It’s been great, thank you.
Gordon Lamphere (32:59): Thanks again to Matt. We appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter, and they help us continue to bring on quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere of The Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
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