Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Variations on low cost housing

[Marganne (marganne]

Rod,

So glad to hear about yet another way to 'crack the nut'. You ended 
up in 2003 with a mix of low cost homes located next to 
not-so-low-cost homes? What's happened since 2003 with comparative 
values to the surrounding community? Are prices for the more 
expensive houses within the project being adversely affected by being 
mixed with lower-cost housing? Or is it not that simple.

Cheers!
Marganne

At 5:36 PM -0400 5/19/08, Rod Lambert wrote:
> A caveat with the hybrid approach is, that in allowing more freedom of
> choice, the prospective owner must exercise serious discipline if the
> budget is king. They must "follow the script" to meet budget and not be
> tempted to emulate what their neighbor is doing to their house ("feature
> creep"). It also requires frequent updates on cost estimates so that the
> owner quickly sees the results of making changes. Several people here
> did follow the script and got very low cost, well-built homes. ($70/sf
> in 2003) But several people also paid significantly more then they
> originally expected mostly because of the reasons mentioned above.
> (However almost everyone got good value for what they paid.)