Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com) | |
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 07:10:33 -0800 (PST) |
> On Jan 29, 2020, at 9:19 AM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> > wrote: > > To be fair, this is not a cohousing issue. Cornerstone is located in a > very popular neighborhood in the very expensive Boston, MA metro area. I > did a quickie search for one-bedroom condos nearby and $550k is fairly > typical (on the high end of average). This IS unsustainable...it's a HUGE > issue in the Boston metro area, that everyone is aware of. But it doesn't > reflect cohousing per se being expensive. :( To its credit, cohousing has achieved market rates — there was a time when banks, developers, and neighbors thought it was a crazy idea and a financial sinkhole. So to be at market rates is good in many ways. It has put cohousing in the mainstream of exciting living options — even in the NYTimes But housing is a general problem that is also cohousing’s problem. One part of the cohousing effort was to build less expensive housing. Shared resources reducing exclusive single household acquisitions. A socio-economic example of how to solve our ills. And it has done that in many ways. The emphasis on paying more attention to infrastructural strength and longevity, green materials and processes, integrating children in to multi unit projects, adding shared facilities like gyms and office space. Many of these things are now common in condominiums. The remaining leap is to make it possible for more than a quarter of the population to even consider it. The ultra wealthy build their own family compounds and socialize amongst themselves. The newly rich prefer to show their wealth with McMansions and huge lawns. But more than half of the population can’t even consider cohousing because they don’t have the income required — not to mention the 20% downpayment required. The downpayment on $300,000 is $60,000. Who has that sitting around? Even in cohousing, our eyes have become bigger than our bellies. Then there is the problem of banks refusing to finance small units because they have no resale value, and cities and towns zoning against small houses and multi-household buildings. It’s the next frontier. Cohousing has accomplished everything else. It’s still a lot of work but the obstacles are typical of real estate developments that are not duplicates of the house next door. Sharon ---- Sharon Villines, Washington DC Sustainable Cohousing http://sustainablecohousing.org
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1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Judith Adler, January 28 2020
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Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Sharon Villines, January 28 2020
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Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Diana Carroll, January 29 2020
- Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Sharon Villines, January 29 2020
- Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Brian Bartholomew, January 29 2020
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Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Diana Carroll, January 29 2020
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Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Sharon Villines, January 28 2020
- 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Judith Adler, January 28 2020
- Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone Fred-List manager, January 29 2020
- Re: 1 Bedroom unit at Cornerstone David Heimann, January 29 2020
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