Cohousing-L Mailing List: apparent obstacles to sweat equity

[Judy (BAXTER]

Mark Ontkush wrote: 
sweat equity is much more feasible than it seems to appear to many of the
posters on this list.
(1) It is not necessary to have experience in construction,
but if this is the case, allow for more time to construct.  Some of houses
built at Findhorn were done with 90% unskilled workforce, and the final product
is of far higher quality than market contractors. 

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Aside from the issue of time availability to do the work, which is for many a
problem, my understanding is that lenders do not want to wind up with a
partially built home ( they think worst case) and are not willing to lend
without the assurance that the work WILL be done and to their (probably market)
standards.  Our primary construction lender is relaltively inexperienced in
that arena, and is very concerned about exactly who our contractors and subs. 

There are some members of our group ( and some non-members because of this
problem) who wanted to do some, not all, of the building, but that is the word
we got.  If we didn't need financing, or had more flexible lenders, maybe it
would be different.  But it seems you can't finanance the shell.

My impression from various of Rob's comments is that the intentional
commmunities that  used so much sweat equity were more "intense" if that isthe
word - my idea of cohousing is not something that I totally change my life to
build, altho in reality , it has been more time than I'd hoped.  I would not
sign on to building all weekend for who know's how many weekends, plus planning
meetings, etc., etc. And we HAVE done some sweat equity rehab - but really not
a lot, in the grand scheme of things.

Yours, hoping to pick my way around construction chaos soon, 

Judy

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, (MoCoCo)
Twin Cities Area, Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota
e-mail: baxter [at] epivax.epi.umn.edu