Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Feedback Requested - Partnering with Realtors

[Linda Hobbet (coho]

At Village Hearth in Durham, NC, we partnered with a developer in order 
to get built. One of the criteria was that we would work with the real 
estate agency owned by his wife. The people at the agency tried hard. 
They educated themselves about cohousing and met with us multiple times 
to develop strategies. Nevertheless, every new member came as the result 
of the efforts of our marketing team, not the realtor, as has every 
resale, though one seller tried working with a realtor.

There are potential downsides to using a realtor. We were concerned 
about the one seller who tried using a realtor. As a condominium we have 
no power to insist on how the potential buyer is educated about the 
community. They aren't even required to give us names until a contract 
is signed. Realtors may be limited in what they say by fair-housing 
laws. In North Carolina our realtor could not say anything about our 
LGBTQ+ focus. The law is intended to protect LGBTQ+ sellers or buyers 
from discrimination but it worked against us.

We put a significant chunk of our development budget into marketing. 
Since move-in we have only been using low/no cost outreach. We have an 
active marketing team. Seventy-five percent of our initial residents 
came from outside the state. Our most recent residents came from 
Colorado and San Diego.

Figure out your target demographic. We are a 55+ LGBTQ+-focused 
community.We use social media our peers use, Facebook, not Tik Tok, etc.

We stay connected with potential members.
Send out a regular newsletter. We have been using MailChimp but will be 
transitioning to SubStack, which is free if you aren't doing online 
selling. We have around 1500 subscribers to our email and almost 50% 
opening rate.
We have monthly Zoom information sessions. Once a person has attended an 
info session, they are invited to monthly neighbor to neighbor sessions 
, a social gathering. We usually get between one and five attendees.
We encourage visitors and give tours. If they are from out of town, they 
can stay in our common house guest room if it isn't already booked for 3 
and sometimes up to 7 days. They attend a common meal, observe meetings, 
and participate in work days if one is happening.
Maintain a Facebook page
Maintain a website (ours is badly in need of a overhaul. We are working 
on it).

Place ads on cohousing.org and ic.org.

Get booths at local events. Most allowed us to participate at non-profit 
rates when we explained what we were doing and that this wasn't a 
for-profit business.

Try to get interviews/articles on local media. Give talks at local 
organizations. Put on an event at libraries in your area. We held meet 
and greets at a local pizzeria every two weeks (advertised in social 
media, flyers, our newsletter and FB page). Sometimes it was just a 
chance for members to socialize but we often had curious drop-ins. Talk 
to people. Several members came to us because they were told about us by 
friends who weren't interested themselves. When we started meeting 
people who said they had heard about us second-hand, we knew we were 
doing a good job :-)

If you haven't even broken ground and have only five homes left, I think 
you are doing well.

Linda Hobbet

PS. we had quite a lot of turnover during development, even people who 
had put in a significant amount of money and work. It happens. Our 
development consultant told us to expect it. Don't let it discourage you.


On 4/22/2024 1:49 PM, Mac Thomson via Cohousing-L wrote:
> Like other cohousing communities, we are selling community first and homes second, 
> which means a fairly involved courtship between the community and prospective buyers 
> to discover whether we’re a good fit. We are considering working with a realtor 
> to bring more people into our courtship process.

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VillageHearthCohousing.com
706-202-7178
coho [at] lindahobbet.com