Your common house will be the place you spend the most time together as a community in both large and small groups. You will want the space to meet both the particular needs of your initial members and the changing needs of future residents over many decades to come. The challenge of balancing versatility, function, size and cost calls for an experienced cohousing professional. The process will go best if community members have visited several cohousing communities, toured the common houses and talked to the people who live there about what they like and what they don’t like.