About the site

Purpose

Having been involved with coliving since almost its inception, watching the sector grow, the site is an ongoing project to document primarily destinational 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
• accurately representing facilities
• promoting spaces
• building typology awareness
• 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.

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, not only did I create this site and compile its database (manually!), I also founded probably the first ever blended+hybrid coliving space back in 2010.

Before there were really only intentional communities (quite niche), with the rise of tech in SF, hacker houses (still quite niche!) — whence emerged lifestyle design, leading to the rise of digital nomads. The turning point for destinational spaces (purposeful and inclusive!) even though they don't represent so much of the market.

I was myself a semi-itinerant digital nomad and supporter of coworking long before this, so having an interest in emergent lifestyles, space planning, and hospitality, running one myself and making an attempt to categorise all the different types, seemed like a worthy exercise which I stand by to this day.

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

After 4 years I departed my experiment in hospitality, returning to tech, just as digital nomading was starting to take off. It occured to me it'd be nice if it were easier to find and more accurately identify their features. So of course I created a very basic version of this directory, slowly building it out.

Continuing my experiments in the sector, I started a coliving crowdfunding campaign specifically (and unusually) offering coownership with reoccuring use as a co-operative, instead of just investment, this received suprisingly robust response considering it was an unnecessarily outlandish plan to renovate an old textile mill in the Portuguese mountains! Being just before the pandemic, I never really properly picked it up after having uh, spent enough. I do hope to open up a smaller-scale acquisition to backers using a mix of investment and use stakes still under the Hub House brand that I'd created, potentially to include an affiliated network of properties.

→ Read my occasional writings about coliving on Medium.

Focus

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

Unlike other directory and booking sites potential members are not prevented from visiting an operator's own site, nor is there a lock-in for operators — all spaces are promoted so that prospective members can find out the most about them.

Commercial sites are driven by business imperitives, thus you'll find that coliving.com mostly lists house shares and even just shared 2-bed apartments which have nothing in common with community let alone coliving, and others whilst better aligned, can include guesthouses and such, as there's more of them than colivings to generate booking fees and pay subscriptions.