Re: Cutting Housing Costs | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Martin Tracy (mtracyix.netcom.com) | |
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 95 14:06 CDT |
(In response to Bill Paiss' response to Harry's post about sweat equity.) Hi Bill! My wife Mardi and I are option holders in Phase 2 of the Sharingwood cohousing community. Since we plan to implement what Harry suggests, I thought I would take the opportunity to respond to your message to him. First of all, we recognize that sweat equity isn't for everyone. Then again, neither is cohousing ;-) >>Suggesting that people can cut the cost of their housing by 40-70% by buying >>the materials and building it themselves ignores several critical things. >- People must have both the time and experience to build a house themselves. This can be learned. Mardi and I attended two summer camps on house building, which included a lot of on-site building of real houses. The total cost was about $4,000 (for both summers for both of us), and provided great summer vacations, with homemade cooking, challenging work, and interesting teachers. Neither of us had any construction experience prior to the camps. We knew that we wanted to build our own house, and that building it ourselves would bring us great satisfaction, and would save us a lot of money. >- When calculating the cost they don't include their time. We are allowing a full year to build the house. We will not be making any money during this time. When we're done, we will fully own lot and house. So we are "out" whatever we would have chosen to earn that year. On the other hand, we will save about $400,000 by not having a mortgage! >- It assumes that people have enought money or credit to purchase the >materials since very few banks, if any, in this country will make a loan on >an owner-built CoHousiong community. Yes, true. People interested in sweat equity should start saving immediately! We've been saving many years by foregoing such items as cable TV, microwave ovens, dish washers, European vacations... Fortunately, we haven't given up anything important. The savings go into US treasuries, which have consistently been earning 7.75% or more for years and years. If you have read, "Your Money or Your Life" by Dominguez and Robins, this will all sound familiar. >Perhaps you have some different laws in Canada that encourage this kind of >savings. I wish we could say the same here in the US. What we're doing is perfectly legal, simple (not easy), and available to anyone interested, at almost any income level. It requires neither government subsidies, nor any onus on the part of the community. It takes no special background. Mardi and I both had dancing careers, although we have both since self-educated ourselves into more lucrative technical work. For some, it will take longer than others to save the money. It has taken us about five years. >The issue of sweat equity is one that we have been struggling with since we >began. I would love to hear from groups that have been even partially >sucessful with sweat equity on individual homes within their communities. Sharingwood is one of the very few cohousing groups to make this form of sweat equity possible. Groups following Chuck and Katie's model too closely build all houses at roughly the same time, and the economics make it difficult for some members to "build their own" on their own schedule. I'm told that several of the eleven homes currently built at Sharingwood were constructed in part or in whole by the families living in them. Of course, cohousing groups could be organized around the purchase of the land, leaving the houses to be the responsibility of each family, within certain architectural guidelines, and on no particular schedule. Sharingwood was organized this way. -- Martin Tracy, Los Angeles mtracy [at] ix.netcom.com
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Cutting Housing Costs BPaiss, March 31 1995
- RE: Cutting Housing Costs Rob Sandelin, March 31 1995
- RE: Cutting Housing Costs IAN_HIG, April 1 1995
- Re: Cutting Housing Costs Martin Tracy, April 3 1995
- Re: Cutting Housing Costs Karen Frayne, April 5 1995
- Re: Cutting Housing Costs Gerald Rioux, April 5 1995
- Re: Cutting Housing Costs Martin Tracy, April 6 1995
- Re: Re: Cutting Housing Costs Harry Pasternak, April 6 1995
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