Cohousing-L Mailing List: Internal loans

[Rowena Conkling (rowenac]

I'm not quite sure what kin d of loans you have in mind.   We have had
three different kinds of loans at CambridgeCoho.  In order to purchase
our land we needed more than the downpayments of the members at that
time added up to.  A number of the members were able to come up with
fairly substantial sums which they loaned to the LLP at the going rate
of interest.  Most of these loans were paid off as people bought the
units.  However, some are still in place and will be paid off by an
assessment as soon as the contractor is paid in full.  The assessment
can be paid either in cash or by monthly additions to our condo fees.  A
second set of smallish loans (approximately 2% of cost) was also entered
into by a substantial number of people at the time they got mortgages.
These are being paid off by deducting the amount due on a monthly basis
from the condo fee.  There were also a couple of loans by the LLP to
individuals who needed help with their down payments.  These are being
repaid to the LLP as monthly additions to the condo fees.   All of
which  sounds a lot more complicated than it seems to be in practice.

Our condo fees/costs are very low at the moment because we have central
utilities - heating, a/c, electric, and water, and because we are doing
the cleaning, trash removal, etc. ourselves (people sign up for a weekly
chore or two - as usual, some do more some do less but it gets done,
more or less!)  This allows us a little flexibilty in repayments.  We
also have some income from renting offices and extra garage/parking
space to members.