RE: Incentives for early joiners
From: Rob Sandelin (floriferousmsn.com)
Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 14:14:19 -0600 (MDT)
Cohousing is real estate development driven by idealism (the search for
community). There are many real estate development companies around the US
that utilize outside investor money. It is also one of the highest risk
investment areas. These companies fold ALL the time, and it was precisely
this arena, riskly loans to real estate companies that caused all the
savings and loan banking problems in the early 90's which made the federal
government tighted up its loan guarentees for real estate considerably.

High risk venture capital is required at the point you acquire a site, and
it sometimes takes groups a couple trys to actually get their capital
together enough to be able to bid on a site. If you are in a hot market
area, you are competing with other real estate development companies and
often they are better situated to make the deal, and thus you might lose the
first couple of sites that look promising.

Once you get serious about doing the real estate development you will need
ready access to a goodly amount of liquid cash (as well as a legal property
holding entity, a good decision making process, and an attorney) This is the
high risk place. If people are willing to do high risk investment without
return, well, you have a pretty good group of idealistic folks. But many
groups make other arrangements. Just be clear about it - money issues cause
lots of sleepless nights and tension so be sure you recognize this in your
processes and make adjustments as needed to help people feel ok about it.

Rob Sandellin, On the road at Tucson Cohousing, AZ












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