Ya it's a real thing. At 35 y.o, I've hosted people in the 600 sqft basement my partner and I rent, but realistically all of our space fits about 3 extra people and all of that is in the same space as the kitchen. Some of my friends have older places with more space and better layouts for such a thing, but they're also spending quite a lot more and still need decent dual incomes usually to pull it off. They also tend to position themselves as "hosting" type people. With such volatile careers, it doesn't make sense to extend ourselves unnecessarily and don't plan on having kids or getting married. This place was a reluctant upgrade after getting kicked out of our studio, so at this point we consider it a luxury to have any separate rooms at all. We don't have any upward mobility to look forward to in the next 5 years, and although I'm generally satisfied in life, typing those words feels a bit depressing.
To be fair, if owning a place or renting with more space was the most important thing to us, we could hypothetically move to a lower CoL area, but we ultimately find that a rather poor tradeoff that would only save a marginal amount on net anyway. We're thankful to have those close friends that have the space and enjoy hosting.
To be fair, if owning a place or renting with more space was the most important thing to us, we could hypothetically move to a lower CoL area, but we ultimately find that a rather poor tradeoff that would only save a marginal amount on net anyway. We're thankful to have those close friends that have the space and enjoy hosting.
Canada fwiw.