Loca101, a space development company that converts aging buildings and idle urban properties into housing and lodging facilities, is accelerating its expansion as it marks its 10th anniversary. Drawing on experience built up developing urban housing, the company is widening its reach into the lodging market with capsule hotels and hostels, aiming for 10 billion won ($6.9 million) in annual sales this year.
Loca101 said on the 19th that it has developed about 80 sites since its founding in 2016. The company's core business is identifying aging buildings and underused small and mid-sized properties and redeveloping them into new residential and lodging spaces. It handles the entire process in-house, from sourcing properties and assessing feasibility to permits, design and construction, leasing and operating lodging facilities.
Its flagship brand is PixelHaus, an urban housing line. Beyond newly built properties, the company remodels idle floors and run-down spaces in existing buildings and supplies them as housing. It focuses on raising the utilization of real estate by analyzing a building's location and structure along with demand in the surrounding area, then introducing a suitable housing format.
More recently, the company has pushed into the short-stay lodging market. Examples include TAKT, a capsule-style lodging facility in Gwansu-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, and SEOUL101, a hostel in Gwancheol-dong. Moving beyond a housing business aimed at medium- to long-term residents, the company is broadening its customer base to foreign tourists and short-term visitors. It also plans to develop urban housing and lodging facilities in other formats, including premium co-living.
Loca101 is applying data gathered from developing and operating numerous spaces over the past decade to its new businesses. It designs a business model suited to each individual property by analyzing demand by area, room composition, construction costs and operating efficiency together. Through this approach, the company plans to grow into a space business operator spanning development through operation, rather than simply construction or leasing.
"The past 10 years have been a time of finding new possibilities even in old buildings and small spaces, and turning that into a sustainable business," said Park Jun-gil, chief executive of Loca101. "What matters is that we have grown beyond a company that merely builds spaces into one that can identify the latent value of real estate and commercialize it directly." The CEO added, "Based on the experience and operating capabilities accumulated through PixelHaus, we will roll out a range of space businesses including hostels and premium residential facilities," and said, "We will develop into a space business operator in which multiple businesses are organically connected."