New research has shown that traditional rental properties fail to fulfil any of the major wish-list items of tenants. At the same time, investor owners often get disappointing rental returns from typical houses.

But a new housing concept now emerging in key market hotspots is addressing both problems.

Research by the Gallery Group, which gathered feedback from 1,300 tenants who were sharing homes with others, provided surprising results. Gallery Group CEO Adam Barclay says lone-person households are the fastest-growing segment in the market so they asked members of this cohort the kind of rental accommodation they wanted.

And the features these typical tenants wanted most were a private bathroom, a lockable pantry, fully-furnished premises and bedrooms that were air-conditioned and lockable – and without the owner living on the premises.

Most typical share houses or apartments fail to provide these desirable features.

This has given rise to a new concept dubbed Co-living – where purpose-designed new homes provide individual rooms with their own bathrooms in what looks like a conventional three-bedroom modern house.

Such a home in, say, Logan City in Brisbane’s south might rent for $400-450 per week as a conventional dwelling, but as a Co-living home each room can be rented separately for $275, totalling $825 per week.

On Wednesday 28 April, Hotspotting founder Terry Ryder hosted a special webinar on Co-Living, featuring buyers’ agent Scott Northcott of Property Hotspot and Adam Barclay of Gallery Group.