About the site

Purpose

As a growing sector, this site is an ongoing project to document primarily destinational remote-work friendly colivings across the globe — with the goal to become a platform co-op serving the needs of both users and operators.

• making spaces easier to find
• building awareness of the sector
• accurately representing typology
• promoting and classifying spaces
• supporting efficient operations
• …and identifying trends†

† Did you know that of all the spaces listed 20% have closed down. Not ideal encouragement for anyone starting out with the idea of creating their own coliving — yet isn't actually too terrible! Or that only 5% implement fixed move-in days, something that greatly eases operation…

→ Read about what coliving is and is not.
→ Want to list your coliving space?

Focus

Currently building out the directory, expanding to leverage cross-promotion whilst also providing functionality that improves operating and staying at colivings.

Unlike with other directory and booking sites, users are encouraged to visit an operator's own site, nor is there lock-in — all spaces are promoted so that prospective members can find the most out about them.

Commercial sites are driven by business imperitives, so for example you'll find that coliving.com mostly lists residential house shares having little in common with remote-work friendly coliving communities, and others whilst better aligned, include guesthouses and the like, as there's more of them to generate their revenue.

Promotions

If you'd like details of seasonal deals from operators, follow the Whatsapp group, newsletter (see front page) or instagram.

Promotions are not shown alongside spaces that have self-certified. We promote spaces selectively, most promoted spaces are self-certified, whilst some use affiliate links. Those with star classifications, or affiliate links appear more frequently.

Origins

At a now defunct coliving in the Canaries where polaroids (yay!) were taken upon arrival and strung up with pegs.

Hi! I'm Jacob, I've been involved in the coliving movement since its early days following the emergence of coworking — not only did I start Coliving Community with its intent to support operators, compiling its database (manually!), I also founded probably the first ever blended+hybrid coliving+coworking space back in 2010.

Before this there were really only intentional communities (quite niche), yet with the rise of tech in SF hacker houses (still quite niche!) emerged followed by lifestyle design, leading to the rise of digital nomads. This was the turning point for destinational coliving spaces — being purposeful and inclusive, yet representing just a small segment of the wider coliving market.

After a stint as technical director with a marcomms agency during the dot-com years in London, I became a semi-itinerant digital nomad and supporter of coworking, having an interest in emergent lifestyles, space planning, and hospitality, so moving into coliving struck me as moving up to the next level!

Having visited quite a few spaces at perhaps the wrong times even wearing the same shirt, I've ended up on their webpages.🙈

I departed my own experiment in hospitality after 4 years, returning to tech, just as digital nomading was starting to take off. So it occured to me it'd be good if it were easier to find and more accurately identify coliving spaces and their features. Thus this directory.

Continuing my experiments in the sector, I started a coliving crowdfunding campaign specifically (and unusually) offering coownership with fractional reoccuring use as a co-operative, not just investment, this received suprisingly robust response considering it was an unnecessarily outlandish plan to renovate an old textile mill in the Portuguese mountains. But overlapping the pandemic and being too much work I shelved it.

🆕 I'm now embarked on renovating an old house in the Cévennes, France using a mix of investment and fractional use stakes, potentially expanding as an affiliated network of properties. Follow on Insta, signup for the newsletter, or join the Whatsapp.

→ Read my occasional writings about coliving on Medium.

No AI

All data on the site is manually compiled and reviewed, though some operators may submit AI-generated descriptions. We do not use AI generated summaries, whilst they can be useful and even impressive they almost always have at least one fault whether it's a gym marked as a workspace or some other detail.

AI is a tool and every tool has its most appropriate use. AI is great at generalisation, which can be a time saver, but do you want this when deciding where might be a good place to stay, work and connect with people who get you. (A generalisation might help.) In any case we beleive our human brain is remarkably effective even if skimming across reviews, and is much less likely to miss details for our particular individual case that AI wouldn't consider. (Plus we need to keep our brains active doing these kinds of things, else we'll lose it.🙈) So we like to encourage exploring — and evaluating — yourself!