Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New York Times article on the Rocky Corner foreclosure (Steve Welzer) and (Sharon Villines)

[Dick Margulis (dick]

With all due respect, Thomas Lofft, what makes you think we didn't do 
all of that?

The article, because it is limited in length, does not give the full 
history of the project. We did our due diligence. We hired good 
consultants. Did we make any missteps? Sure. We're human. But we 
consistently made the best decisions we could with the limited 
information we were able to divine. Some things are not knowable in advance.


On 2/12/2022 7:10 AM, Thomas Lofft wrote:
> Debt by itself is not the critical issue. Cohousing is a typical capitalistic 
> enterprise, financing our future with other peoples' money.
>
> The critical issues are controlling development costs from the very beginning:
> Issues are:
>
>    1.  Paying too much for the land, and buying it too soon, before being 
> certain the total project will be affordable to the buy-in prospects.
>
>    1.  Overdesigning the project with costs higher than affordable to the 
> buy-in prospects; e.g., common house too large; homes too large and overpriced 
> for the budgets of the buyers; luxuries such as extreme energy conservation 
> that is not affordable.
>
>    1.  Not being fully aware of jurisdictional development regulations and 
> restrictions, costs and fees for development, roads, utilities, development 
> fees, social welfare burdens passing on for the rest of the jurisdiction and 
> state;
>    2.
>    3.  Getting experienced professional real estate agents, attorneys, land 
> planners, engineers, architects, and a cohousing experienced project manager.
>    4.
>    5.  Assuring that there are enough committed buyers who have invested funds 
> for down payments that cannot be withdrawn before completion of the project.
>    6.
>    7.  Being sure the lender will fund the project for both site development 
> and construction, and permanent mortgages for homebuyers, conditional on 
> traditional credit and affordability issues.
>
> Land acquisition should always be with an option contract which allows ample 
> time to meet all zoning and other jurisdictional compliance requirements before 
> going hard with the money.
>
> Cheers and best wishes for more affordable cohousing communities.
>
> Tom Lofft

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