Re: Finding a cohousing home from far away
From: Morrison, Robert (romorriscabletron.com)
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 17:57:51 -0500
On Wed, 07 Apr 1999, Arlene Hoffman <ahoffman [at] visualimage.com> wrote:
Subject: finding a cohousing home from far away

  I am not in a cohousing group, but I have been following the cohousing
movement in this list and
elsewhere for 7 years. I am on the NH/MA border, 30 miles northwest of
Boston.
  Short-term rentals in cohousing are occasionally available, and this is a
good way to get the feel
of a built community from the inside.
  I think you are doing the right thing by looking for a resale unit or
possibly a new unit in a built
community.
  "Attending" meetings by phone is feasible, but would require a
high-quality speaker phone like
the ones used in corporate conference rooms. Have any cohousing groups done
this? I suspect 
some groups would be unwilling to bear the expense and labor of buying the
equipment and setting 
it up at every meeting. In my opinion there is no substitute for attending
in person. However,
if a group transcribes the minutes of meetings promptly onto a computer and
emails them, that
would help avoid losing some of the continuity if you have to skip some
meetings.
  You have raised an interesting issue about how to get to know a community
between when you
first find out that a unit is for sale and when you have to either commit to
a purchase or lose your
chance. Some resale units are sold to people on a waiting list and are never
advertised to the
public. Others are advertised, but by this time there may in fact be not
enough time to get to know
a community before you have to make a commitment. So one strategy is to
check out several
communities, get on the waiting list of one or two communities, and if they
don't use a waiting
list, ask them to notify you promptly when a unit becomes available for
resale, preferably long
before it is advertised to the public.
  I don't think being near a major airport would be a problem, if being
within an hour's drive is
sufficient.
  I don't think being near mountains would be a problem either. In fact,
most of the cohousing
communities in the U.S. are near mountains, not intentionally but by
coincidence. 

Bob Morrison
 

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