Cohabitation by necessity
A number of young people, students and unmarried people are turning to cohabitation in order to reduce the cost of accommodation, which for many is an insurmountable obstacle in their efforts to become independent.
Especially during this period, when many students will be asked to look for accommodation, the solution of cohabitation seems ideal, as expense sharing is an important lure.
According to Eurostat, during the 12 months ending March 2023, rental prices in Greece saw an annual increase of 10.4%. This is the largest year-on-year increase recorded since 2008.
As Dominikos Pritis, founder and CEO of the MyRoomie app, explains, “although cohabitation abroad is very common, in Greece this kind of thing does not happen to the same extent, although, as we can see, there is a relative demand. The reasons for the increase in interest are basically economic,” notes Pritis. The digital platform attempts to match the demand from those interested in cohabitation with the supply from those who live in a property and wish to find a roommate to share the costs.
According to Pritis, despite the short history of the platform, to date it has 5,100 registered users, while hosting 1,500 real estate ads. At the same time, the platform is currently trying to strengthen the property supply through cooperation with real estate agencies.
So far, 90 roommate agreements have been concluded through the platform, that is, a total of 180 people have managed to find a roommate. MyRoomie operates in Greece and Poland and plans to expand to nine more European countries.
Yiannis P.G., 39 years old, developer, cohabited in an apartment in Exarchia for one year, in 2021-2022. As he states, “the experience was pleasant, despite any problems there may have been. Because we had many common interests and were involved in common projects, it was also one of my most creative periods. Our main problem was that the space was too small for our needs, as a result of which we had a lot of micro-conflicts over completely trivial things.”
