As Institutional Money Enters Flex Living, Operations Become the Asset

Blueground, the New York company that rents furnished apartments for stays of 30 days or more, reported revenue of 560 million dollars in 2023, up 70 percent from 300 million dollars a year earlier, when it announced a 45 million dollar funding round in March 2024. At the time it operated more than 15,000 apartments in 32 cities and counted more than 4,000 businesses among its customers. Six months later Habyt, a Berlin coliving and flexible housing provider with about 30,000 residential spaces in more than 50 cities, raised 40 million euros to fund acquisitions, saying it was on track for group profitability, according to Urban Living News.

Those numbers describe a sector that has moved past proving demand. Flex living, the furnished, serviced housing let for weeks or months, now attracts institutional capital, large platforms and consolidation. The question facing the next generation of operators is less whether people want flexible housing than whether that housing can be delivered consistently across thousands of units without losing the service that justified it in the first place.

Capital has arrived

Investment in Europe's residential sectors reached 62.2 billion euros in 2025, up 22 percent on the year, and JLL expects it to pass 70 billion euros in 2026, the firm said in March. Within that, flex living has become a recognized segment rather than a niche. In Spain, flex living investment reached 708 million euros in the first half of 2024, about three times the level of a year earlier and 47 percent of all residential investment, according to CBRE data reported by Iberian Property. CBRE put prime coliving yields 50 basis points above multifamily at the time, reflecting the additional operating risk investors associate with the product.

The pipeline is substantial. JLL estimates that Spain has about 19,000 operational flex living beds and another 19,600 under development, with Madrid accounting for about 60 percent of existing stock and more than 70 percent of projects underway, according to figures cited by Urbanitae in December 2025. That pace of growth puts pressure on operators to scale faster than their teams and systems were built for.

Scale is an operations problem

Adding units looks straightforward on a spreadsheet. In practice each property brings its own arrivals, departures, cleaning, maintenance, local suppliers, payments, tenant communications and regulatory obligations. Residents do not experience a portfolio. They experience one apartment, one check-in and one response when something breaks, and their view of the operator rests on those moments.

Regulation adds to the load. Spain's single rental registry, created by Royal Decree 1312/2024, has required registration numbers since July 2025 for properties advertised as temporary rentals, and listings without one can be removed. Operators running hundreds of units across several cities must track registrations, contracts and local rules property by property, which is difficult to do reliably with spreadsheets and email.

The result is a paradox at the center of the business. Flex living sells flexibility to residents, but delivering that flexibility reliably requires highly standardized operations behind the scenes. The apartment must be ready on the agreed date, information must be clear, the internet must work and problems must be resolved quickly, regardless of which city or building the resident is in.

The operator becomes part of the asset

As institutional owners take larger positions, the operator's role changes. Owning or financing the right building is only part of the return. Occupancy, length of stay, pricing, reputation and maintenance costs all depend on how the building is run, and those factors flow directly into the valuation investors care about. The yield premium on coliving in Spain is, in effect, a price on operating risk. Operators that can demonstrate consistent performance across a large portfolio are in a position to narrow it.

That makes operational capability a competitive advantage in its own right. Investors assessing a flex living platform increasingly look at its systems, data and processes alongside its buildings, because those determine whether a 50 unit pilot can become a 5,000 unit portfolio without a drop in service.

Technology, with people where they matter

Software will carry much of this growth. Property management systems, channel managers, payment tools and automated messaging can handle repetitive work such as availability updates, booking confirmations, cleaning schedules and routine questions. Corporate clients, such as the more than 4,000 businesses Blueground reported serving, also expect suppliers to provide accurate inventory and booking data that plug into their own procurement and relocation workflows.

The goal of automation in a housing business, however, is not to remove people from the service. It is to free staff for the situations where judgment matters: a resident whose move has been delayed, a family arriving with children, a maintenance problem that cannot wait. Operators that use technology to absorb routine work, and keep skilled staff available for exceptions, are better placed to scale without becoming impersonal.

From property management to living operations

The language around the sector is already shifting from managing furnished apartments to running living operations, a business that combines real estate, hospitality, technology and service. The operators most likely to succeed over the next decade will combine portfolio-level efficiency with local market knowledge, consistent resident experience, flexible distribution, connected systems and good operational data.

These questions were on the agenda at The District, the real estate investment event held at IFEMA Madrid from 22 to 24 September 2026, where Living was one of eight sector forums. RentRemote took part alongside RentOS, its property management software for mid-term and flex living operators, to meet operators, owners and investors working on how the sector scales. For residents, the outcome of that work shows up in the furnished apartments for monthly stays that operators list on RentRemote, including in Madrid.