HAUSS MAGAZINE · 8 min read
For a long time, housing was thought of as something fairly stable. You bought or rented a home, settled in, filled the closets, hung the pictures and built a life around an address. That idea hasn't gone away — far from it. But it increasingly coexists with another reality: people who move more, work differently and need residential solutions that are less rigid.
That's where flex living comes in.
A very specific need
The term may sound new, even a little cold, but it responds to a very specific situation. There are professionals who spend several months in a city for work. Postgraduate students who don't want a traditional student residence. Relocated executives. International teams. People who arrive in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga or Valencia and need to live well from day one, without buying furniture, without signing endless contracts and without spending weeks sorting out the basics.
They're not exactly looking for a hotel. Nor a conventional rental. They're looking for something in between: a comfortable, well-located or well-connected space, with services, a degree of flexibility and a simpler experience.
From niche label to mainstream conversation
That need explains why flex living has gone from a niche label to a central conversation within real estate. In Spain, the living sector was the main driver of property investment in 2025, accounting for €5.4 billion and 29% of the total, according to CBRE. And in the first quarter of 2026, Colliers put investment in living at €2.386 billion, with flex living increasingly established as a complementary layer of the residential offer.
But perhaps what's most interesting isn't just the figures. It's what they say about how demand itself is changing.
Housing is no longer understood purely through ownership or traditional rental. It is starting to blend with services, community, technology, hospitality and professional management. The user isn't just asking how much a space costs. They're asking what problem it solves. Whether they can move in quickly. Whether there's wifi, communal areas, cleaning, a gym, flexibility, a clear contract and a location that doesn't complicate their life.
In that sense, flex living is best understood as a practical response to cities that have grown more expensive, more mobile and more demanding.
Not a solution for everything
It isn't a solution for everything, and it's worth saying so plainly. It won't solve the housing access problem on its own, nor should it be sold as a magic bullet. In fact, it can create tension if it takes up residential space that would otherwise go to permanent rental, or if it's developed without sound regulation. But it does meet a real slice of demand that the market wasn't serving well.
El País reported in April 2026 that temporary and flexible rental in Spain already had 17,441 operational units and nearly 19,854 in the pipeline, with a strong concentration in Madrid. The same analysis pointed out that the model is aimed mainly at mid-length stays, mobile professionals and users looking for bundled services.
That figure helps put the phenomenon in perspective. We're not just talking about "coliving with good design" or apartments for digital nomads. We're talking about a real estate product with specific demand, specialized operators, institutional investment and an operating logic all its own.
The challenge is doing it well
Because flex living can easily slip into a shallow version of itself: buildings with polished aesthetics, photogenic common areas and plenty of talk about community, but little operational depth. And this business, if it's going to work, doesn't depend on design alone. It depends on occupancy, turnover, maintenance, user experience, pricing management, services, technology and location.
Renovating a building and slapping an attractive brand on it isn't enough. You have to know how to operate it.
An asset that behaves like a business
That's one of the major differences from classic residential property. In flex living, the asset increasingly behaves like an operating business. Returns depend not only on real estate value but on how the day-to-day is managed. Who occupies the spaces, how long they stay, which services they use, how the experience is maintained, what reputation the operator builds and what level of efficiency it achieves.
For developers, this opens up new possibilities. Commercial land, former office buildings, underused assets or well-connected locations can find a second life if the model is well conceived. For investors, it represents an opportunity — but also a higher bar: not all flex projects are equal, and the quality of the operator weighs as much as the quality of the property.
Fashion is no substitute for analysis
There are cities where this model makes a great deal of sense. Places with international universities, tech ecosystems, corporate headquarters, long-stay tourism, foreign talent or residential pressure. But even there, the question isn't whether flex living is fashionable. The question is whether that specific asset meets real demand.
Because once a trend catches on, it tends to attract more enthusiasm than scrutiny.
And enthusiasm, in real estate, can be dangerous if it isn't paired with analysis. A flex living project needs to answer very clear questions: who is going to live there, how much are they willing to pay, what alternatives do they have, what occupancy level is reasonable, what operating cost does the model require, and what happens if demand cools or regulation changes.
It complements, it doesn't replace
Even so, the trend appears to have room to run. Not because everyone wants to live flexibly, but because more and more people, during a specific stage of their lives, need to.
That's the key point: flex living doesn't replace traditional housing. It complements it.
It fills the gaps that the classic residential market doesn't cover well. Between the hotel and the rental. Between arriving in a city and settling in for good. Between working from anywhere and needing a comfortable base. Between living alone and wanting a degree of community. Between moving around a lot and not wanting to give up quality.
A mirror of how we're beginning to live
Perhaps that's why it's so useful for understanding where the sector is heading. It doesn't just speak to buildings — it speaks to habits, to how we change cities, jobs, pace and expectations.
Real estate has always been something of a social mirror. It tells us how we live, but also how we're beginning to live.
And flex living, with all its promise and its open questions, is precisely that: a way of dwelling that is less permanent, more managed, and better suited to a generation that cannot — or does not want to — always build its life around a fixed address.