WeWork’s Shared-Living Apartments More Than 80% Leased, With Another Location Planned For Seattle
WeWork’s two hybrid office and residential locations have piqued quite a bit of interest—both are more than 80% leased.
The dorm-like apartments—dubbed WeLive—come fully furnished with amenities like mailrooms that double as bars, roof decks and communal kitchens. Its DC location, roughly 80% leased, opened in May to much fanfare.
The living community offers unit sizes from studios to three-bedrooms and members can rent shared rooms for under $900/month. New York’s co-living location in lower Manhattan opened for beta-testing in January and is now 100% leased, someone close to the company said.
When the co-working giant—valued at $16B—sought funding in 2014, part of its pitch to investors was that it would open 14 WeLive locations by the end of 2016, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company is far from those projections, as its NY and DC shared-living locations will be the only two open at the close of 2016. Still, WeWork has a Seattle WeLive on the horizon for 2018, and executives remain optimistic that the Millennial-targeted concept is viable.
“WeLive remains an incredible opportunity for the company,” WeWork spokesman Dominic McMullan tells Bisnow. "We are continuing to perfect the product and we are excited about the future of this concept." [WSJ]
