KEVIN — flexible living

Who Kevin was

Dino and Kevin were both United States Marines. They met in 2013 at a VA transitional center in Hollywood. They worked their way up together over the next few years, and in 2018 they opened their first business — a hostel, bootstrapped almost entirely off Craigslist. Free furniture. Construction materials. Fence boards. An entire shed they hauled home and turned into a tiny house. Revenue doubled year over year.

They both loved hostels. Not as the cheap option — as the form itself: strangers in a common room, the mixing, the fact that you leave knowing people you would never otherwise have met. They were in one together shortly before Kevin left for Thailand. That was the last time.

Kevin passed away in August 2023.

What he did was call people — constantly, for no reason, to check that they were all right. From the outside it looked like a man wasting his time. It took losing him to understand that Kevin had been focused the entire time, on the only thing that actually matters.

The company was going to be called Portal.
It is called KEVIN, in memory of him.

This is us

A hatchback towing a trailer loaded with salvaged lumber on a dirt track in the hills, with four people standing beside it. — A hatchback, a borrowed trailer, and a load of salvaged lumber. This is what bootstrapped actually looks like.

Doorbell-camera still of three people on a front porch on a wet day. — A doorbell camera, because nobody was stopping to take a proper photograph.

The mission
To create a global network of flexible, work-ready living spaces — enabling people to live and work anywhere without sacrificing comfort, productivity, or connection.

KEVIN is a hybrid of three things that already exist and none of which is quite right on its own: a hotel, a sharehouse and a hostel. Fully equipped, work-ready rooms under one monthly membership, in a network you can move through rather than a place you sign a lease on.

It is built for the in-betweeners — people between cities, between jobs, between chapters — and for the ones who want to actually know a place rather than sample it. Dino was one of those people in 2013 — a Marine out of the Corps with nowhere fixed to be. So was Kevin. Nobody builds for them, because they are not there long enough to be worth building for. That is the gap.

The belief underneath all of it

Immersion, not a sampler.

Nobody knows a city from a week in it. You know the airport, the main street, and whatever reception circled on the map. A few days buys you the highlights reel and a camera roll.

Stay long enough and something else happens. You get a regular place. You do a grocery run. You learn a handful of names, then a handful of words, then how the neighbourhood actually works and who runs it. You come away knowing the people, the place and the culture — not a sample of them.

That is the entire argument for the length of the stay. It is not a discount for booking longer. It is the difference between visiting somewhere and living there.

Ten toes down.

40–50Target rooms per house

MonthlyOne membership, many cities

Weeks–monthsThe stay — not nights, not years

JapanFirst base of operations

Aerial concept visualization of a KEVIN campus at dusk: three storeys of private rooms wrapped around a planted courtyard, with the commons, gym and glass-roofed lap pool in the middle, and shops, a workshop and covered bicycle parking along the street edge. — The campus. Rooms on three sides of a courtyard; the commons, the gym and the pool in the middle of it; and the street edge given over to shops the neighbourhood can use.

Why it starts in Japan

A prefectural town with direct access to Tokyo, rather than central Tokyo itself. Far enough out that the land and the shell are affordable and the house can still have a garden, a bath and parking. Close enough that the city is roughly an hour away on rail that already exists.

It is also where Dino intends to be based.

The vehicle already exists

KEVIN enters Japan through Mitsukaido Holdings GK (水海道ホールディングス合同会社), registered in Minato-ku, Tokyo in March 2021 and named after Mitsukaido in Ibaraki, where Dino was living in 2019. Its two existing lanes are urban hospitality assets in Tokyo — minpaku, apartment hotels and coliving — and community-scale coliving development in Mitsukaido itself. KEVIN is the branded expression of the second lane.

The Hokuten Group is a subsidiary of Mitsukaido Holdings LLC, a Puerto Rico company, and Mitsukaido Holdings GK is its Japanese affiliate. Destination and site decisions are not final; this section will be updated as they are confirmed.

mtkd-holdings.com · mtkd-holdings.co.jp

Why this is on a brokerage website

Because brokerage is how it gets paid for. There is no fund behind KEVIN. The capital comes out of closings, one at a time. That is the entire connection between the two.

Not a credential. Nothing about this makes anyone better at selling a hotel, and it is not offered as evidence that it does. It is here so that whoever is working with Dino knows what he is actually aiming at and where he is going.

Hyper-amenitised, and spare where it counts.

Not basic — basic sounds like a saving. A room is a bed, a wardrobe, a full-width floating desk, a task chair, one armchair, layered light, blackout, a door that seals. No ensuite. No marble. Nothing to photograph.

The money that would have gone into forty small private bathrooms goes into a handful of very good shared ones — and into the things nobody photographs at all: acoustic separation between rooms, ventilation that does not carry sound, redundant fibre, hard-wired desks. Restraint upstairs is what pays for the building downstairs.

Concept visualization of a KEVIN private room in pale wood: single bed with a shoji-pattern headboard, wardrobe, wall-mounted screen, desk with task chair, and a low sofa and table. — A private room. Exacting where it is invisible, plain where it is not.

Concept visualization of a second KEVIN room finish: pale timber, a window to the street, single bed with a navy runner, wardrobe with luggage storage, desk and a low sofa. — The same room in a second finish — paler timber, a window to the street. The plan does not change; the material does, so that a house is not forty identical boxes.

Concept visualization of the shared kitchen: two parallel islands with induction stations and sinks, glass-fronted refrigerators, and a wall of assigned pantry lockers. — Two parallel islands, assigned cold and dry storage per member, enough stations that nobody waits. Deliberately hard-wearing rather than photogenic.

Concept visualization of the double-height commons: long communal table, lounge seating, an open kitchen counter and a mezzanine walkway above. — The commons. One social heart rather than four half-used rooms — which is where the community part either happens or does not. The volume is the expensive part; the fit-out shown is the generous version of it.

Concept visualization of the handroll counter: a long timber bar with a glass neta case and eight seats, a pair of turntables and a record wall opposite, and glass doors to the pool beyond. — A handroll counter and a pair of turntables, facing the pool. Eight seats and one chef — the version of a hotel restaurant a house this size can actually run, and the room that earns its keep after dark.

Concept visualization of the gym: cable stack, racks and free weights, selectorized machines and cardio equipment, with the KEVIN mark on the wall. — A real gym, not a treadmill in a corridor. If someone is staying three months, the building has to hold an actual life. Equipment count scales with budget; the floor area is the commitment.

Concept visualization of the bath house: a row of seated washing stations with hand showers, stools and buckets, an indoor cypress-edged bath, and glass doors opening to a screened outdoor bath in a small garden at dusk. — Indoor 大浴場 with seated washing stations, opening to a screened 露天風呂 in a small garden. This is the amenity a private ensuite could never be. Shown at the upper finish spec — it still works in plainer materials.

Concept visualization of the shared washroom: timber locker bank and bench, two glass shower rooms in dark tile, twin vanity with mirrors, and separate enclosed toilets. — The handful of very good shared bathrooms that the absent private ensuites paid for. Lockers, benches, real ventilation, doors that close properly.

Concept visualization of the wellness corridor: a glass-fronted cedar sauna, a cold water station, and a tiled steam room opposite. — Sauna one side, steam the other, water in between. Upper spec here — a smaller, plainer version of this is the conservative build.

Concept visualization of the indoor lap pool under a glazed roof, with glass doors to a garden along one side. — The lap pool is the clearest budget line on this page. It is the first thing out of a conservative build and the first thing back in with room to spend.

Concept visualization of the cowork library: long rows of hard-wired desks with monitors and task chairs on two levels, bookshelves along the back wall, behind glass. — Hard-wired desks, monitors, real chairs, behind acoustic glass. The whole argument rests on this room — work-ready has to mean a desk someone would actually choose.

Concept visualization of the laundry: a row of washers and stacked dryers, a folding counter with stools, and posted instructions under the KEVIN mark. — Enough machines that laundry is never a negotiation, and somewhere to sit while it runs.

Concept visualization of the genkan: a raised timber step-up, a full wall of shoe lockers, and the reception desk beyond, opening to a planted courtyard. — The genkan. Shoes off at the step, and the building changes register from street to home.

There was no promise. There was a plan — and it is still the plan.

Build the thing the two of them liked being inside of. Be on the giving end of the help they were both once on the receiving end of. Dino is carrying the torch.

KEVIN is a separate personal venture of Dino Monteverde and is not a service, product or offering of The Hokuten Group, Keller Williams Commercial or KW Worldwide.