Common, the NYC startup that designs, leases and manages coliving spaces, announced this week it closed on a $50 million Series D round led by investment firm Kinnevik. Now, with more than $110 million of total venture capital to date, the company plans to take its tech-driven approach to the wider multi-family industry.
Founded in 2015, Common provides shared spaces in NYC, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., Seattle, Philadelphia and Jersey City. All its units come furnished and newly renovated with perks like Wi-Fi, free onsite laundry and a guaranteed private bedroom. The idea is to offer people comfortable but affordable housing options in some of the country’s most expensive cities.
The business has proven successful thus far and is in the midst of a rapid expansion into other forms of housing, with more than 17,500 residential units under development in 26 cities around the world. In 2019, the company launched Kin, which provides housing options for families with young children. This year, Common launched a new brand Noah, which manages workforce housing, as well as its Remote Work Hub, a hybrid of a coworking and coliving space that was inspired by the pandemic and the mass shift toward remote work.
“I founded Common because I saw that the urban rental experience was broken,” founder and CEO Brad Hargreaves said in a recent blog post. “We started with coliving — a need I personally understood, and one where Common was able to create a better product for both owners and renters — but we always had an eye on the bigger vision of making housing better. The choice to fundamentally reconsider how property management works was a pivotal one, and over the past few years has taken us well beyond coliving.”
Keeping up that momentum, Common is now partnering with Kinnevik to make further strides in the larger multifamily space. The investment firm will also help the startup expand into the European market next year.
As for 2020, Common expects to have more than 6,000 units under management by the end of the year and will be opening a second headquarters in Atlanta, where it says the majority of its workforce will live. Common currently has dozens of open positions across its engineering, marketing, finance, operations and sales departments at its various offices around the country.
