Meet Silvia Grattieri, Co-Liv Ambassador for Portugal

The Co-founder and COO of B-Hive Living whose mission is to “support people’s health and well being through wellness-led design, technologies and activities”, Silvia’s approach to coliving enables the creation of empowering spaces for residents to lead healthy, connected and fulfilling lives.

How do you currently define yourself, and what drives you?

I’m the Co-founder and COO of B-Hive Living, a coliving developer and operator in the UK creating empowering coliving spaces for a new generation of renters to lead a healthier, connected and fulfilling lifestyle. We started B-Hive Living in Oxford in 2017, and are now expanding into Portugal. My passion and life purpose is to build a more connected and inclusive society through coliving.

Before founding B-Hive Living, I spent 15 years working in senior marketing management roles for blue-chip FMCG brands such as Wall’s, Liptons and Dove. My ambition was to drive change at scale, bring purpose and social impact to these brands through strategy and innovation, as we were reaching and shaping the lifestyle of millions of consumers everyday around the world.

What makes you passionate about coliving, and why are you actively promoting the coliving scene?

I truly believe that coliving is the answer and antidote for two big societal challenges we currently face: affordable housing and loneliness — goals stated by the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs).

At B-Hive Living, we believe that living well starts at home. After all, over 80% of our health outcomes in life are determined by the standard of our home, relationships within it and the surrounding environment.

This is, however, far from the harsh reality of the private rental sector. When we started in the UK in 2017, 1 in every 3 rented homes was deemed unfit for human habitation. That’s why we placed — “creating purpose-built homes that actively support people’s health and wellbeing through wellness-led design, technologies and activities” — at the heart of our mission.

Coliving homes should not simply be a place to rest your head, but an experience to elevate human conditions through community and wellbeing-led design and build. This was our mindset applied to the development of our Hives, and we endeavour to create an empowering space for residents to lead a healthier, more connected and fulfilling lifestyle through an integrated approach to coliving for wellbeing design, built and services.

What are your vision and thoughts on the future of coliving for the year to come?

I believe this pandemic will continue to trigger a host of new requirements from operators and tenants, and with that a greater emphasis on safety, wellbeing and convenience will become the norm. As remote working becomes widespread, I expect new coliving spaces will seek to provide larger private spaces with communal areas designed to cater for both living and working needs in equal measure and diverse levels of intimacy. Further investment and training in community facilitation will be needed, as mental health support and prevention becomes an essential skill in the coliving professional toolkit.

As the long spell of remote working continues, the perceived need for presence and proximity in the workplace is dissolving and will create a new wave of remote workers, freelancers and digital nomads shifting the demand and supply for coliving spaces towards the outskirts of major cities and in residential neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, I expect urban demand for coliving to remain high and grow.

With stress, anxiety and burnout on the rise, the homebuilding community will have a massive opportunity to shift their approach to sustainability. The industry will need to go beyond the focus on the 1% equation associated with the costs of energy, water and waste, and truly embrace the transformative potential of healthy buildings to support the health and wellbeing of current and future generations.

I recently published a blog following our January 2021 Portugal Coliv meet up which you can read here for our top 10 coliving predictions for the year ahead in Portugal.

You joined Co-Liv as “Ambassador for Portugal” — which opportunities do you want to create for the country you represent, the organization, its members, and the coliving industry?

With Williams Johnson Mota — my husband and Co-founder of B-Hive Living — we are honored to be Portugal’s Co-Liv Ambassadors. Our mission is to drive and shape the coliving movement, given its undeniable impact on society. PRS and coliving are a new concept in Portugal, and rents were frozen for many years preventing PRS to flourish. Therefore, we’re doing a lot of groundwork to educate stakeholders in the industry so that they view coliving as a modern alternative to the traditional residential housing model or hospitality.

Coliving is a resilient and counter-cyclical investment strategy and aggregates more value than any other yield strategy today. We want investors to see the opportunity for this type of investment in Portugal. Coliving is fast becoming the rental asset of choice for renters and demand far outstrips supply in Portugal, so we expect big growth in coliving here. It’s key to point out that Portugal is probably the world’s favourite location for digital nomads or anyone looking to have an amazing lifestyle. Join us!!

How did you get into coliving?

B-Hive Living was born out of our aspirations to radically shift the experience of shared living renters around the world. Both myself and Williams lived in shared accommodation in different cities and countries from Italy to Brazil and the UK, and we often felt that the wellbeing and convenience of renters were an after-thought for developers and landlords.

In 2016, we set the vision for the Hives. At that time, rising rental prices in most major cities were at odds with the general quality of rental properties. Millennials also desired a social and flexible way of living. We were inspired by exceptional coliving spaces where purpose, design and technology come together to serve the wellbeing and convenience of a new generation who wish to live a connected, purposeful and fulfilling life.

After two years of market research we bought, refurbished and launched our first Hive prototype in Bicester, Oxfordshire (UK) at the end of 2017. At the time, Bicester was the fastest growing town in Europe and the epicenter of the motorsport industry with 85% of the world’s motorsport engineers living in the area. In other words, many highly educated expats were looking for a soft landing into a new life in the UK. They were the perfect audience to help us test our proposition while ensuring a consistent demand for new projects. Since then, we’ve acquired, developed and launched four new projects which have been crucial to help us learn and develop every aspect of our business model from land acquisition through development to interior design and service delivery. After such a steep learning curve, we’ve set our eyes and hearts on bringing our vision to a new scale, in terms of size and locations. We know we offer something special that generates great returns and have a tangible positive impact on peoples’ lives. We’re now curating the right partners to support our growth for schemes of 30 to 200 units in the UK and Europe.

Thank you for being part of this movement! How can people reach out, and what can you mostly help them with?

Feel free to reach out at silvia@b-hiveliving.com or connect on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to share our experience at B-Hive Living and help organizations and investors build a solid portfolio from this high growth and highly defensive strategy. Investing in coliving means that you’ll have the security of an appreciating asset class with growing demand whilst also positively impacting many peoples’ lives.

‍

With lots of co-love,

‍

The Co-Liv Team

‍

💙 Donate to our non-profit (we thank you for your support!)

🤝 Discover how to work in partnership with Co-Liv.

📢 Attend our upcoming events and masterminds.

🚀 Follow Co-Liv on LinkedIn or Instagram.

💪 Become a Co-Liv member and join the 10-week Onboarding Program.