Re: cost division: individual v. household
From: Jim Snyder-Grant (Jim_Snyder-Grant.LOTUScrd.lotus.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 09:29 CST
In New View (Acton MA), we did want to find some way of sharing the risk & the 
cash-flow pain in a roughly even way. We came to a relatively easy agreement 
where we divided up assesments & dues so that single-adult households pay 75% 
of what multi-adult households pay.  

The 3/4 split was designed to give a rough approximation of the differential in 
the final house price, plus an acknowledgement that many of the single adult 
households had a tighter cash flow crunch.

We also wrote into our agreement that if everything fell apart & we lost money, 
that the losses would be shared EQUALLY per household. That helped with feeling 
ok about the variable amounts.

Later on, when we needed bigger money to get control of land, we had a land 
fund that people put different amounts into (a minimum of $5000). We paid 
prime+1, to give some recognition of the time value of money (the assesments 
earn a straight 6%).  

As Rob explained, this all gets credited to the house price (except the $40/$30 
quarterly dues, which we burned up on non-reimbursable expenses). However, at 
the earlier stages (now 5 years ago), when actually moving in some day seemed a 
distant dream, we needed to spend some time talking about fairness, and shared 
risk & shared pain, and how to handle financial disclosure, and the whole 
exciting/scary mix of group-money issues.

-Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] lotus.crd.com

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