Smartliving: Complete Definition and Guide

What is Smartliving?

Smartliving refers to a managed urban housing model that emerged in Belgium in the late 2010s. The principle: a single building brings together a large number of furnished studios or flats, rented out by a specialised company on an all-inclusive basis. The resident occupies a fully self-contained unit, with their own kitchen, bathroom and living space.

The difference with coliving is structural. In coliving, the resident rents a private room and shares the kitchen, living room and bathroom with the other inhabitants of the house. In smartliving, none of that is pooled: shared amenities (gym, coworking, laundry, terrace, sometimes a pool or sauna) do exist, but they are optional and complement the home rather than replace its living areas.

What both models share, however, is the core of their commercial promise: a single rent including charges, WiFi, cleaning and maintenance, short and flexible leases (often from three months), a fully digital customer experience and centralised management by an operator. In Belgium, players such as Yust and Rezidentz are developing this model in Brussels, Antwerp and Liège, mainly targeting young professionals, expats and people on the move.

Why Smartliving matters

Smartliving answers a demand that neither classic renting nor coliving fully covered:

• Autonomy without commitment: the resident wants their own studio, not a flatshare, but refuses the three-year lease, the heavy deposit, the utility contracts and the furniture shopping.
• Professional mobility: expats, consultants and professionals on assignment look for a home that is immediately liveable for a few months, bookable remotely and signed online.
• Urban density: for the investor, concentrating many small units in a single building optimises yield per square metre while delivering a high level of service.
• Service as the differentiator: value no longer lies only in the building, but in the services (cleaning, coworking, gym, community) and in the smoothness of the experience.
• A demanding regulatory framework: planning permits, regional habitability standards and fire safety rules strictly govern these buildings, which requires rigorous document management.

The operational challenges of Smartliving

The complexity of smartliving does not come from shared spaces, as in coliving, but from turnover and the granularity of services. An operator must simultaneously manage:

• Fast turnover: leases of three to twelve months create a constant flow of move-ins and move-outs, each with its inventory, deposit and make-ready work.
• Pro rata billing: a mid-month arrival, a service subscribed during the stay or an early departure turns each invoice into a specific calculation.
• Add-on services: extra cleaning, parking, storage, gym access: these options must be subscribed, tracked and billed without leaving the main contract.
• Access control: badges, smart locks and shared space bookings should ideally follow the resident's contract lifecycle automatically.
• Multi-building operations: each new building should fit into a shared process framework, instead of adding its own spreadsheet and exceptions.

How to digitalise a Smartliving operator

1. Map the resident journey: from the first online viewing to move-out, through application, signature, move-in, monthly billing and maintenance requests.
2. Model the data: structure the key entities (buildings, units, residents, contracts, options, invoices, incidents) and their relationships. In smartliving, the rented unit is a self-contained studio, not a room in a house: the data model follows from that.
3. Digitalise booking: present available units, show a real-time availability calendar, provide an application form and e-signature, so that booking can happen remotely without email ping-pong.
4. Automate all-inclusive billing: group rent, charges, WiFi, cleaning and options on a single invoice, with pro rata calculation and recurring collection.
5. Connect the building: link access rights and shared space bookings to the contract, so that a move-in or move-out no longer requires manual action.
6. Steer with data: occupancy rate, revenue per unit, average length of stay, unpaid rents and open incidents, consolidated per building and per brand.

Associated technologies and tools

• Python and Django: a robust foundation to model complex relationships between buildings, units, contracts, options and residents, with a solid administration back-office.
• PostgreSQL: a reliable relational database for booking and billing management, where transactional integrity is not negotiable.
• REST APIs: the architecture connecting the public website, resident portal, back-office and building systems to a single backend.
• Payment providers: for recurring collection, deposits and online payment of additional services.
• Connected access control: locks and badges driven by API, synchronised with the contract lifecycle.

Conclusion

Smartliving is not a cosmetic variant of coliving: it is a distinct property model, where the rented unit is a self-contained home and where value is created through lease flexibility and the richness of services. That promise rests entirely on operational execution, and therefore on tooling. At KERN-IT, supporting IKOAB in coliving since 2017 has shown that the software building blocks of managed housing (book, contract, bill, intervene, inform, steer) transpose directly to smartliving, provided the data model is adapted to the self-contained studio rather than the shared room.