What is coliving, really?

Coliving gets described as "renting a room with extras", which misses the point entirely. The extras are not the product. The people are. What you are joining is a household that happens to be larger than most, where the washing up rota, the Tuesday night supper and the fact that someone will notice if you go quiet for three days are the whole substance of the thing.

At Selgars we have run five seasons of this now, and the pattern is consistent. People arrive expecting accommodation and leave talking about the people. The room mattered for the first week. After that it was the kitchen.

Coliving works when everyone contributes slightly more than they take. That is not a rule we enforce with a spreadsheet; it is just what makes a house feel alive rather than transactional. Cooking one evening a week. Noticing the recycling is full. Saying yes to the walk when you would rather not.

It also asks for a tolerance of other people being different from you. A good coliving house is not a group of friends who already agree. It is a group of strangers who become something, precisely because they did not start aligned.

Remote workers who have noticed that working alone is quietly corrosive. People between chapters — after a breakup, a redundancy, a move, a burnout. Couples who want to try something before committing to it. Writers, founders, therapists, engineers, people on sabbatical.

It suits people who are curious more than it suits people who are certain. If you already know exactly what you want your months to look like, a coliving house will keep interrupting you. If you are open to being surprised, that interruption is the point.

It is not a hotel. Nobody makes your bed. It is not a retreat centre with a fixed programme. It is not a commune with a doctrine. And it is not cheap accommodation with a nice view, though the view is genuinely good.

If you want to see how it works in practice, our coliving pages set out the rooms, the prices and the rhythm of a season.