Re: list of "waypoints"
From: Eileen McCourt (emccourtcharter.net)
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 10:28:36 -0700 (PDT)
Important milestones during construction are unit selection (we lost some
people over this event alone), unit pricing (more people lost) and defining
options and upgrades (part of design but you would be surprised how much
this continues through construction).  

A huge milestone that caused us to loose time on our schedule is Fannie Mae
approval and the first mortgage.  In a related issue, because the first
people who moved in paid cash, it was hard to get appraisals to meet the
full cost of the homes for the first few buyers with mortgages.  Another
factor in Fannie Mae approval was the completion of the Common House.  

An additional milestone in CA is DRE (dept of real estate) approval.  I
can't remember if Fannie Mae held up DRE or DRE held up Fannie Mae, but they
are related, and both are needed before homes can be sold and mortgages
written. I think DRE is first, because we did sell homes to cash buyers
before we could get individual mortgages.

We had to move those who needed 90% financing to a later schedule of move-in
because initially banks would only finance about 70%, so those with more
cash were able to establish the market rate and then the mortgages were
easier to get.  Had we been able to anticipate these delays and
dependencies, we would have had a smoother move in process.  As it was, we
had many transitional situations for up to half of the members.  One of the
things we did was to let people move in and rent back from the LLC, a VERY
risky proposition, but it worked out okay.

--eileen
Eileen McCourt
Oak Creek Commons 
Paso Robles, CA
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Moskowitz [mailto:robertm [at] knowledgetree.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:05 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_ list of "waypoints"

I'm trying to put together in my mind, if not on paper, a list of 
"waypoints" that we will/should encounter in moving from a group of 
people who have expressed an interest in cohousing to a group of people 
actually living in cohousing. My idea is that we can aim for these 
waypoints and we can also ask for increasing levels of commitment as we 
approach and pass them.

Some of the waypoints I imagine include:

Opt In
Verification of Financial Capability
Acquisition of Property
Design
Hiring of contractor
Construction
Move in

If anyone can help me identify more, and/or put them in the best order, 
I'd be very grateful.

Thanks.

Robert
www.consciousnesscentral.com/cohousing
_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: 
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.