Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cohousing premium?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Nov 27, 2020, at 11:23 AM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> No premium. I've worked with zillions of appraisers now and they don't care
> at all. It's all about the square footage and number of bedrooms, and maybe
> a really small premium for having more amenities, but for all the
> intangible benefits of cohousing? Nada.

I’ve done walkthroughs with appraisers in DC who wouldn’t even look at the 
common spaces. “There is no comparable to compare them with so I can’t appraise 
their value.”

I don’t think we have ever sold a unit using a real estate broker but some have 
tried. One agent was not showing people the common house at all. They entered 
the property from the side and never even looked at the piazza. When I asked 
him about it, believing that I would show the common spaces first, he said, “ 
if people don’t like the apartment, they don’t care about anything else.”

When I compared neighborhood prices 10 years ago, our 3 bedroom units were 
selling at similar prices as 3 bedroom houses with yards in the neighborhood. 
There weren’t many apartment buildings or condos then and I haven’t done a 
recent comparison.

Increasingly we are getting calls from people who want to  live in cohousing, 
and that was not true in the early 2000s. We had to explain it to people. The 
Resale and Rental pod still explains but people listen and ask questions as if 
it isn’t a foreign concept.

I wonder, rather than selling for more, units sell faster. As a unique item in 
most morkets, people have very limited choices. I think there are only 2 four 
bedroom units in cohousing in the DC area and only one of them has turned over 
in 20 years. There is a line waiting out there, or in here, for that size unit 
in cohousing. It is not uncommon (I’m repeating myself here) to have an open 
house, receive 3 offers, and in the end it is not just the one that works out, 
but the choice of the seller. The person they think will be best for cohousing.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org