Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Limiting whole-house renting in CoHousing

[Marvin Berkowitz (marvinb780]

 Dear Sara,I'm a group therapist and consultant, and probably shouldn't be 
weighing in on this topic.  But I'm interested in co-housing options for myself 
(now 80) and helping facilitate for communities on such questions as you raise. 
 Unfortunately, I don't have money for a buy-in for myself and I don't want to 
be shifting from place to place on 1 year rentals.  I'm looking for an open 
ended lease.
Re your Question:Seems if you want to maintain close cohesiveness in a very 
small community like yours, you need some guidelines about approving who sales 
and rentals of units are to, as in a condominium complex. Have you looked at 
your turnover rate?---sales and rentals?  
Seems Once residents begin selling to investors, you're in for trouble. Option 
4---minimum length leases (like a year) seems sensible to maintain community 
connection.  The other options that you present seem burdensome and overly 
restrictive to current residents who, for one reason or another choose to move, 
and will require constant management by the community board.
Sincerely,Marvin Berkowitz
    On Tuesday, June 21, 2022, 07:24:08 AM PDT, Sara Gottlieb <sara.gottlieb 
[at] gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Hello CoHousers!

I write from Lake Claire Community CoHousing in Atlanta, GA, USA.  We are a
very small community (13 households) that has been in existence since
~1996.  Last year, one of our households, in a hurry to sell their home,
sold to a non-resident investor whose intention was to rent the house for
income.  While the situation has (so far) worked out well for the community
- we were very involved in recruiting renters, and they are very involved,
community-minded people - the situation raised a lot of concerns that this
could become a trend with very detrimental impacts on community.  All of us
receive multiple calls, emails, text messages, and mailings every day from
investors looking to buy our homes.  Some of our residents are aging and
could find themselves in a position of needing to sell quickly.

We started a discussion about ways to prevent this from happening*, while
allowing our residents to rent our homes during times of need (have to move
temporarily to help an ill family member, have to move during a time when
house prices are depressed and want to wait for the market to recover,
etc.)  At least one of our residents is opposed to any limits on house
rentals and doesn't think we have any reason to be concerned that this will
become a trend.

I was asked to put this question out to the larger CoHousing community to
see what other communities (especially smaller ones) have done about this
issue.  Thank you for your input!

-- 

Sara J. Gottlieb
Lake Claire CoHousing Community, Atlanta, GA USA
sara.gottlieb [at] gmail.com


*Options we considered include:

1. Limit % of homes that can be rented at any one time

2. Limit whole-house rental to owners who have lived in the community for a
minimum amount of time (e.g. 1 year)

3. Limit lease lengths to the amount of time owner has lived in community
(lived here for 1 year?  You can only lease your house to someone else for
a maximum of 1 year, etc.)

4. Minimum lease length (to avoid an AirBnB situation)
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