Twenty-two terms the industry actually uses, in plain English, from the association that has defined coliving since 2016.
Words shape markets. Co-Liv works on coliving's vocabulary from the beginning: a crowdsourced definition of co-living in 2018, the universal definition essays in 2019, and The Art of Coliving in 2022, the book the industry calls its bible. This page condenses that work into one reference. For the full story of the word itself, read what is coliving; for the deeper research, browse the library.
The words that name the movement, and how they relate to one another.
Any shared living space that improves the quality of life of its residents. That is Co-Liv's definition, kept deliberately wide. In practice, most coliving is a furnished residence where three or more unrelated people choose to live together, with private bedrooms, shared kitchens and living spaces, one all-inclusive payment and flexible terms. On spelling: the industry writes coliving without a hyphen, following the path coworking took, while co-living survives in press and planning documents; both mean the same thing. The full story of the term is on what is coliving.
The umbrella term. Shared living covers every form of housing where residents share space and resources beyond the family household: coliving, cohousing, house shares, student housing, intentional communities. Co-Liv uses it as the wide lens on the movement, with coliving as its most visible branch.
A resident-led model born in Denmark in the 1970s: private, self-contained homes clustered around shared facilities such as a common house, planned and governed by the residents themselves. Cohousing communities are typically owner-occupied, multigenerational and built for decades. The contrast with coliving: coliving is usually operator-run rental with furnished rooms and flexible stays, while cohousing is self-organized ownership with a much longer horizon.
Coworking is shared workspace; coliving is shared home. The two apply the same logic (a private core, shared resources, community, flexibility) to work and to living, and they share a family history: coliving borrowed the word structure from coworking and dropped the hyphen the same way. Many coliving spaces include a coworking area, and some operators run both under one roof.
A group of people who choose to live together around explicit shared values or a common purpose, from ecovillages and spiritual communities to values-driven coliving houses. The term is older and wider than coliving and does not imply a business model. Intentionality is also a useful dividing line inside coliving itself: some houses curate residents around a niche or mission, others are simply well-run shared housing.
The practice of mixing several living and hospitality products in one building or brand: coliving alongside hotel rooms, serviced apartments, coworking, food and beverage. The aim is one operating platform serving every length of stay, from a night to several years. The term gained ground in the 2020s as coliving, aparthotels and build to rent converged.
Someone who works remotely and moves between places while doing so. Digital nomads are one of coliving's founding customer segments, and destination coliving (a furnished room, fast wifi, instant community, monthly terms) is largely built around their needs. They are a segment, not the definition: most coliving residents are professionals settled in one city.
How shared living gets structured, financed and measured.
The company that runs a shared living building day to day: leasing, pricing, staffing, community, maintenance, and the brand residents actually experience. An operator may own its buildings but usually does not. In coliving it is the operator's craft, more than the architecture, that decides whether a space works.
Two ways to structure an operating company. Asset-light operators do not own their real estate: they lease buildings or run them under management agreements, which needs little capital and scales faster. Asset-heavy operators own or co-invest in the property, which is capital-intensive but keeps the real estate upside in the house. Most coliving startups begin asset-light.
A structure where the operator rents an entire building from its owner at a fixed rent, usually long term, then rents the rooms out itself. The operator keeps the spread between the two rents and carries the occupancy risk. The common alternative is a management agreement, where the owner pays the operator a fee and keeps both the income and the risk.
A commercial model where residents join as members rather than sign a bare tenancy: one recurring fee covers the room, utilities, services and community life, sometimes with access across the operator's whole network of houses. The framing supports flexibility and belonging. In most jurisdictions members are still tenants in the eyes of the law, so the model layers on top of housing regulation rather than replacing it.
The share of rentable rooms or beds occupied over a given period, the core operating metric of any shared living business. Coliving typically measures it at bed level, which is more granular than whole-unit residential. A stabilized coliving building generally aims for occupancy in the mid-nineties percent.
How long the average resident actually stays. Coliving sits between hospitality and the traditional lease, with typical stays running from a few months to a few years. Turnover is expensive, and community is the strongest retention lever: Co-Liv's research on the ROI of community, in the library, links resident-driven community life to stays several times longer.
Buildings designed and operated for students, with private study bedrooms, shared amenities and by-the-bed rents that follow the academic year. PBSA matured into an institutional asset class a decade before coliving, and coliving is often pitched to investors as its natural next step for young professionals. The mechanics are similar; the audience and the rhythm of the year are not.
Residential developments built to be held and rented by institutional landlords rather than sold unit by unit, professionally managed and amenity-rich. Coliving increasingly sits inside BTR strategies as the higher-density, more communal end of the spectrum, with smaller private units and larger shared spaces.
A serviced apartment is a furnished, self-contained flat with hotel-style services, aimed mainly at business travelers and relocations; nobody promises you will know your neighbors. Coliving makes the opposite trade: some private square meters given up for generous shared space and a deliberate community life. The two converge from both sides, as aparthotels add social programming and coliving adds hospitality polish.
The UK regulatory category for a dwelling shared by three or more unrelated tenants who share facilities, licensed and inspected by the local authority. Much small-scale coliving legally operates as HMOs, while large purpose-built co-living is treated as its own planning use class in cities like London. A reminder that coliving lives inside housing law, whatever the brand says.
The craft that turns a building full of people into a community.
The staff role responsible for the human side of a shared living building: welcoming residents, hosting rituals, handling conflict, gathering feedback. Co-Liv draws a line between the two titles: a manager creates community life for residents, a facilitator empowers residents to create it for one another. In the words of The Art of Coliving, communities are not managed, but facilitated.
The craft of designing the conditions under which a community builds itself: onboarding, shared agreements, rituals, feedback loops and resident ownership, rather than a calendar of entertainment. Co-Liv codifies the practice in the Community Facilitation Handbook (2021, with Conscious Coliving and Art of Co). The rest of the research sits in the library.
The discipline of shaping spaces so that people connect with them and with each other, drawn from urbanism and now standard vocabulary in shared living. In coliving it runs from the layout of a kitchen to a ground floor that opens onto the neighborhood: cafes, events and uses shared with locals. Good placemaking extends the community beyond the front door.
A way of getting things done in communities: whoever sees the work simply does it, without waiting for permission, as long as the action fits the group's values and can be undone. The term comes from volunteer movements, and Co-Liv itself runs as a decentralized network under this model. Inside houses, doocracy is a practical step from top-down management toward resident ownership.
The mature end of community building, where residents run their own events, decisions and onboarding and the operator acts as a platform rather than a host. Co-Liv's research finds this approach produces both the strongest community feeling and the lowest long-term cost, because engaged residents stay far longer. The standing instruction from The Art of Coliving: don't build community, help community build itself.
The vocabulary of shared living keeps growing, and Co-Liv keeps this reference current. Tell us what the industry says that this page does not yet define.