There are more ways than ever to live near people you actually chose. The words get used interchangeably — but the models are very different in privacy, cost, and how much of your life you share. Here's the honest map.
Every one of these models is an answer to the same question: why should the most important people in your daily life be decided by accident? The housing market gives you neighbours by chance. Intentional communities — the umbrella term for all of the below — give you neighbours by choice. What separates the models is how much you share: space, money, meals, and decisions.
Use this page to find the model that fits how much sharing you actually want, not how much you think you should want. That mismatch is the most common reason communities don't last.
The models
Cohousing
Private homes, shared everything-else.
Each household owns (or rents) a complete, self-contained home — your own kitchen, your own front door. The homes are clustered around shared space: a common house for meals and gatherings, gardens, workshops, laundry, guest rooms. Residents manage the community together, usually by consensus or sociocracy, and typically design it together before it's built.
What it's good at
Full privacy with community twenty steps away. Works for families, couples, and elders alike. The most proven model — hundreds exist worldwide.
What's hard
Slow and capital-heavy to start: land, finance, planning, construction — typically 2–5 years. Homes usually sell at market prices, so it's not automatically affordable.
Coliving
One big home, shared daily life.
A group shares one large house or building: private bedrooms (sometimes small studios), shared kitchen, living rooms, and often shared groceries and meals. Sometimes it's friends renting together; increasingly it's run by companies renting furnished rooms with flexible leases.
What it's good at
The fastest, cheapest way into community — you can start next month with a lease. Daily companionship is built in. Great for singles and people testing what shared life feels like.
What's hard
You're usually a tenant, building no equity, and turnover is high. Privacy is thin. Commercial coliving can feel like a product, not a community.
Ecovillages & communes
Shared values first — sometimes shared income too.
Ecovillages organise around ecological living: growing food, natural building, shared infrastructure. Communes go furthest, pooling income or property. Both ask for the deepest commitment, and both can produce the strongest bonds — or the sharpest conflicts.
What it's good at
Living your values completely, not partially. Real self-sufficiency is possible at this depth of sharing.
What's hard
The highest failure rate. Income-sharing and consensus-on-everything demand rare levels of trust and governance skill. Often rural and far from work.
Living near friends, informally
Same street, separate everything.
No legal structure at all — friends deliberately buy or rent within walking distance of each other. A duplex split between two families, three houses on one street, an apartment building where friends keep landing. Writers on this call it the most underrated option in housing.
What it's good at
Zero governance overhead, zero waiting. Each household keeps normal ownership and total privacy. You can start with one move.
What's hard
Fragile — one job change or landlord decision can undo it. No shared spaces unless you create them. The market decides whether homes near each other are even available.
Side by side
The models compared — broad strokes; every real community bends these rules.
Privacy
Cost to join
Ownership
Who decides
Time to start
Cohousing
Full private home
Market price, minus shared savings
You own your home
Residents, by consensus
2–5 years to build; join existing faster
Coliving
Private room only
Lowest — rent a room
Usually none (tenant)
Housemates, or the operator
Weeks
Ecovillage / commune
Varies; least in communes
Low money, high commitment
Often collective
The whole community
Years, or join existing
Near friends, informal
Total
Normal market housing
Normal — each household
Nobody; it's informal
One move
Choose Neighbors model
Full private home
At cost, paid off affordably
You own, at cost + inflation
Residents design & govern it
Starts at any scale — a street, a building, a town
Honestly, though
None of these models is best. Coliving people underestimate how much they'll want their own kitchen at 35; cohousing people underestimate how much governance meetings cost in evenings; commune people underestimate everything. Pick the model that matches the sharing you'll still want in ten years.
Where we fit
Choose Neighbors is a fifth option: own it, affordably, with people you chose.
We're building toward communities with cohousing's privacy and ownership, priced at what homes actually cost rather than what the market will bear — where the residents choose each other and design the neighbourhood together, at any scale from a shared street to a new town. It's partly non-profit, and it starts with people simply finding each other.
What is the difference between cohousing and coliving?
Cohousing gives every household a complete private home, with community in the shared spaces between them. Coliving puts everyone in one large home — private bedrooms, shared kitchen and living space. The practical test: do you want your own kitchen? If yes, you want cohousing (or to live near friends). If sharing one is fine, coliving is faster and cheaper.
Is cohousing cheaper than buying a normal house?
Not automatically — most cohousing sells at market rates. The savings come from sharing: land, walls, tools, meals, childcare, guest rooms. Coliving is the cheapest entry (you rent a room). Building at cost — our model — is the approach that tries to make ownership itself affordable, not just the living costs.
What is an intentional community?
The umbrella term for any residential community formed on purpose around shared values rather than by accident of the market. Everything on this page is a type of intentional community — they differ in how much is shared.
Can you actually choose your neighbours?
In ordinary housing, no — that's the accident this whole movement answers. In every model above, yes: people join on purpose and choose each other. The research on belonging — from the 85-year Harvard Study of Adult Development on — suggests this one difference matters more for long-term health and happiness than almost anything else about where you live. We've collected the evidence here.
How long does it take to start?
Coliving: weeks. Living near friends: one move. Cohousing or an ecovillage: usually 2–5 years for a new build, much faster if you join an existing one. The pattern that works: start small and fast now, build toward the bigger thing together. Picked your model? Here's the complete guide to starting.