Design and property professionals
The collaborative housing movement opens up exciting new opportunities for professions involved in planning, designing, delivering, managing and selling housing. Get involved, expand your skills and connect with like-minded professionals.
Help households make it happen!
Collaborative housing is creating a new professional role for development managers who can guide groups of households through the process of land acquisition, financing, design, approvals and construction. In Europe, this role has typically been taken up by architects and development professionals who want to expand their skillset but it could also be a role that appeals to some firms in the real estate sector.
Learn from international experience
There are many excellent international examples of collaborative housing, particularly in Europe. The City Makers Guild offers study tours to visit some of the best collaborative housing examples. The 2018 tour looked at many examples of Baugruppen and co-operative housing.
Become a collaborative designer
For designers, there’s an opportunity to skill up on collaborative design – this means becoming expert in collaborative design principles that encourage social contact, as well as collaborative processes that formatively and genuinely engage residents in the design process. Also, it’s important to be across the relevant planning legislation and how it shapes collaborative housing opportunities.
Help households to get along
So what happens after they move in? Some groups will want to actively self-manage, others might need support. This might create new roles for property managers, strata managers and facilitation specialists willing to support collaborative communities with self-governance.
Tailored legal and financial advice
If you’re a legal or financial professional working in the property sector, collaborative housing presents some new opportunities – for example, around the legalities of co-ownership, or financial advice on co-buying or converting a property to collaborative housing.
Collaborative real estate
As collaborative housing becomes more common, selling homes in collaborative housing developments will be a niche skill in demand. It will require an understanding of how collaborative housing works and the benefits it can deliver.
Connect, learn and share
Join a dynamic community of practice made up of interested professionals from the property sector and beyond. Learn from the experiences of others, share insights, find new partnerships and be part of making it happen! Moves are underway to set up a community of practice – watch this space for instructions on how to join in.
