Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 33, Issue 14

[Mary English (Mary.English]

Our community, Wasatch Cohousing, is reviewing our right of first
refusal clause this month, because prospective purchasers are being
refused morgages due to that clause. The other factor is that we
couldn't raise the money anyway to purchase a unit with that right of
first refusal clause.

Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Right of first refusal
To: "'Cohousing-L'" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID: <BAY0-SMTP029F9F517C9F60309B2425A3170 [at] phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

Our community passed on the right of first refusal since it seemed
unlikely
we would have, or be willing to raise,  the assets in order to
actually
secure the purchase, thus it would serve no real purpose.  We hoped we
would
never have such a disgruntled owner selling to someone they knew to be
a
huge problem. There is little way to really know what an incoming
person
will really do, all you can do is speculate, based on whatever
impressions
or information you get, information is often pretty limited, which
makes all
new owners an unknown.  It might be better to have a strong recruitment
and
outreach system that honestly and clearly shows and explains the
communities
functions and expectations and cultures right up front to all incoming
interested parties. This way you have a good means to really screen
out
folks that would not want to live in such a place.  Over the years
people
have moved into my community that have been huge assets to the group,
modest
liabilities, or just kind of neutral.  Often it takes a year or so to
really
understand the impact of any particular new person, and of course, over
that
time, and all their time in community, they have potential to learn
and
change and grow. 


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood