How to Enhance Communal Living Spaces in Rental Properties

Community living has become a growing trend in multi-family housing, especially among younger renters including Millennials and Generation Z renters. Co-living spaces allow residents to have spaces where they can spend time, meet with others and work professionally outside of their units. Dedicated shared spaces are easy to incorporate into existing properties. If you currently have a common space or have room in your building to dedicate to a community space, consider these easy tips to upgrade the look and feel of any common spaces.

Lights: Lighting can be very inviting, add indoor lighting throughout your property to brighten up the room. If you have outdoor spaces, light fixtures can elevate the space of a walkway, or larger communal area such as a shared outdoor patio.

Furniture: Adding new pieces of furniture in an existing communal space in your building can be used as a way to attract new groups of people. Be aware of how you arrange your furniture. Don’t space furniture to apart since you want to make the space intimate and approachable for groups of people.

Plants: Greenery can add a lot to a shared space. Add artificial or real plants and flowers throughout traditional areas such as a coffee table, kitchen or on the sides of a hallway.

Texture: Layer accessories such as pillows, cushions and rugs to add extra warmth into a space. Use pops of color to pull more eyes into a specific space.

Wall Fixtures: Shelves, paintings and mirrors are great additions that can make to bring your empty walls to life. To achieve an inviting multidimensional space, approach these decorations as to how you would decorate your own home or apartment unit.

Small Features: Add kitchenware in shared kitchens, books in a shared library or workroom, and similar small details and accessories to make the space more resourceful and homey. Residents will appreciate the extra time spent on these little details and potentially spend more time due to these small amenities.

These quick fixes are easy to incorporate into any sized space. When brainstorming ideas of what features to include in your property, ask yourself what sorts of finishing touches would make you feel welcome. Whenever you are adding new features to your property, be sure to communicate these features to your tenants so that they are aware and more likely to explore the living spaces. The small investments you make to your property can go a long way towards tenant moral and can become incentives that push tenants to renew their leases.