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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-until-you-get-a-family dept.

Alana Semuels writes in The Atlantic that Millennials want the chance to be alone in their own bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens, but they also want to be social and never lonely.That's why real estate developer Troy Evans is starting construction on a new space in Syracuse called Commonspace that he envisions as a dorm for Millennials that will feature 21 microunits, each packed with a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet. The microunits surround shared common areas including a chef's kitchen, a game room, and a TV room. "We're trying to combine an affordable apartment with this community style of living, rather than living by yourself in a one-bedroom in the suburbs," says Evans. The apartments will be fully furnished to appeal to potential residents who don't own much (the units will have very limited storage space). The bedrooms are built into the big windows of the office building—one window per unit—and the rest of the apartment can be traversed in three big leaps. The units will cost between $700 and $900 a month. "If your normal rent is $1,500, we're coming in way under that," says John Talarico. "You can spend that money elsewhere, living, not just sustaining."

Co-living has also gained traction in a Brooklyn apartment building that creates a networking and social community for its residents and where prospective residents answer probing questions like "What are your passions?" and "Tell us your story (Excite us!)." If accepted, tenants live in what the company's promotional materials describe as a "highly curated community of like-minded individuals." Millennials are staying single longer than previous generations have, creating a glut of people still living on their own in apartments, rather than marrying and buying homes. But the generation is also notoriously social, having been raised on the Internet and the constant communication it provides. This is a generation that has grown accustomed to college campuses with climbing walls, infinity pools, and of course, their own bathrooms. Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect. "It's the best of both worlds," says Michelle Kingman. "You have roommates, but they're not roommates."


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  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:12AM

    by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:12AM (#261653) Journal

    TFA is basically an advertisement for this real estate developer, so the whole idea might be fantasy in the first place. Rents must be insane though if someone would pay $900/month for a "dorm" when that could easily be a mortgage payment on a $100K+ house.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:03AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:03AM (#261673) Journal
    Where does $100K buy you a house?
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:24AM (#261678)

      Where the fuck doesn't it? I'll tell you where: In areas where it is foolish and wasteful to live in. If you expect a mansion or a giant house, no wonder you can't find any houses for below $100K. There are acceptable houses in many places for under $60K. At least in the US.

      So don't live in some area where house prices and living expenses are extremely high unless you just don't like having money. At least if you can avoid it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:12PM (#261821)

        Places where the houses are that cheap are places where the jobs don't pay anything.

        You need a certain amount of money to raise a family and pay for your own retirement. Places where the houses are that cheap don't tend to provide enough for that. Want some real estate for cheap in inner Detroit? It's cheap for a reason.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:25AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:25AM (#262105)

          Places where the houses are that cheap are places where the jobs don't pay anything.

          And places where living expenses are ridiculously high often negate any gains you receive from being paid more. Not always, but often. It's about finding the right location, which many people don't try hard enough to do.

          But if you're paying $100,000 for a house, chances are you made the wrong choice. Acting like good ("good" doesn't mean mansions) houses below that price don't exist is absolutely silly.

          You need a certain amount of money to raise a family and pay for your own retirement.

          Yeah, and most people seem to squander their money on useless garbage. Expensive phone service, unreliable and expensive vehicles, expensive cable TV service, unnecessarily expensive housing, not keeping their average price per meal under $2, not negotiating with companies for lower prices even when it is possible, etc. It's about knowing what to spend your money on, but people have been convinced by our consumerist society that they need to waste their money on the latest shiny gadgets.

          Places where the houses are that cheap don't tend to provide enough for that.

          And yet, there are many people raising families there.

      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:45PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:45PM (#262151) Journal

        Where the fuck doesn't it?

        I've moved in the UK from one of the cheapest places to live to one of the most expensive outside of London. Where I was before, $100K would just about buy you a house so far outside of the city that you'd need to own a car (and drive for 20-30 minutes each way) to get to work, which would likely be a false economy - you'd spend far more on the car than the difference in the house prices over the time that you were living there.

        Partly property was cheap because there were few jobs. Now, I'm living somewhere where $100K would barely cover the deposit, but jobs are fairly easy to find.

        I had a look at a few random places in the US. The only places that I found for under $100K were either so far away from any town that you'd spend a huge amount of your time and money just getting anywhere if you had a job or hobbies that involved leaving the house, and were crappy wood constructions that would be a huge maintenance cost.

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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:55PM (#262698)

          I had a look at a few random places in the US. The only places that I found for under $100K were either so far away from any town that you'd spend a huge amount of your time and money just getting anywhere if you had a job or hobbies that involved leaving the house, and were crappy wood constructions that would be a huge maintenance cost.

          Again, I have no idea where you're looking, but $100K is totally unreasonable in most of the US. Random places indeed.

          • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday November 15 2015, @08:52PM

            by TheRaven (270) on Sunday November 15 2015, @08:52PM (#263754) Journal
            And yet I'm not seeing you post a single link to a property for sale for under $100K that is close to somewhere that has jobs, shops, and so on.
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