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Every listing site will show you the pool.
Almost none of them will tell you the city sits at 3,767 meters. Or that "beach weather" ends three weeks after you arrive. Or that the nearest airport adds a connection to every flight home.
I've been picking bases for twelve years.
In my experience, the facts that decide whether a month somewhere works are rarely the ones on the listing.
And I think it always boils down to the same thing: assuming.
The goal is for everything you need for your next coliving decision to be in one place. It's part of the way there already.
617 COLIVINGS. NO SIGNUP GATE.
Check the altitude before the amenities
La Paz sits at 3,767 meters. Cusco at 3,347.
THE NUMBER NO LISTING SHOWS YOU.
At those elevations, you'll probably need a few days to adjust. Headaches, bad sleep, getting winded on one flight of stairs.
If you booked a week, that's most of your trip.
I've never seen a listing mention it. "You may feel terrible for the first four days" doesn't sell rooms.
The check costs nothing: look up the elevation before you commit. Above roughly 2,500 meters, budget adjustment days into your plan instead of discovering you need them after you arrive.
Read the climate by month, not by adjective
"It's warm" is not a climate.
Warm in Chiang Mai in February and warm in Chiang Mai in April are different facts. One is high season. The other is burning season. And May is nearly as hot, with eight times the rain.
What you actually want is two numbers for your specific month: average high and rainfall.
AVERAGE HIGH TEMP AND RAINFALL IN CHIANG MAI, BY MONTH.
They're the difference between a base that works and a month spent indoors.
Air quality isn't a bad one to check either (and will be part of colivingDB in the near future).
The least interesting one: plugs and voltage
Plugs are boring right up until you can’t charge anything.
I landed in South Africa with a universal adapter and assumed I was covered. I wasn't. South Africa runs a large round three-pin that most universal adapters leave off entirely.
Voltage is the other half of it. Most laptop chargers handle 100 to 240 volts, so they travel fine. Hair dryers are usually where this goes wrong.
So check both before you fly. Not at 11pm when your adapter doesn't fit the wall.
Pick the airport that connects to home (or your next destination)
The nearest airport is the one your map app suggests. It might not be the best one to book.
We were visiting my parents close to Tampa, so we booked a flight into Tampa. The routing sent us through Miami anyway, and we still had a long drive on the far end. Flying into Miami and driving from there would have (surprisingly) been faster and cheaper.
In my experience, a base 90 minutes from a real hub often beats one 20 minutes from a regional strip.
Where I put all of it
I got tired of chasing this down across six browser tabs. So I put it all in one place: every coliving on one map, and the details on each listing page.
That place is every coliving I could find, with the data that decides: 617 listings across 84 countries, each carrying:
the elevation, with an altitude note where it matters
monthly climate from three years of weather data
plug types and voltage
the nearest airports
and more to come
No signup gate. No "enter your dates." You land, you see everything, you filter.
If you caught the P.S. a few issues back, this is that site. The difference is that the data layers are now the point beyond the map.
It's still a work in progress. I'm adding data layers as I find ones worth adding.
TELL ME HOW YOU PICK
What's on your checklist that I missed here? I'll add the good ones to the site.
Hit reply. I read everything.
— Caroline
P.S. I get this question more than any other, so I finally made a whole video about it: how I actually afford to travel full-time.
P.P.S. I keep getting asked to go deeper on the systems side of all this. The frameworks, the numbers, the how. So I'm building something. More soon.
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ON THE GROUND
📍 41.7664° N, 23.4246° E — we hiked twelve miles partly because a friend said the ribs here were worth it.
⛰️ Current vibe: Kilimanjaro booked
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