Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: costs/later joiners

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

>I don't understand wy you are selling the first three memberships in
>the second  phase (first phase is sold out) at a reduced rate ??
>       We DO pay  (or rather, credit) 8% interest to people putting up dues
>toward development costs, or loans, ditto.  Not huge, but something.

We are set up as a cooperative corporation and plan to sell interests 
(memberships)  to committed people. As people buy a membership they get 
the right to vote (A cooperative coroporation means one share = 1 
vote), a place on the selection list for units, and also to pay member 
assessments ($43/month).  We will have 12 or 13 shares to sell and we 
have sold one already. A person gave us $35,000 with no legal agreement 
whatever, just a pure act of faith that we will do the right thing. 
(whew talk about commitment, I'm not sure I would do that!)

Anyway the idea is that the first memberships will do most of, perhaps 
all of the site design and development work. Also the funds from the 
first memberships will pay for the site development work.  We want to 
offer a monetary incentive for members to commit money now so by 
offering the first memberships at a lower price than later memberships 
we hope to accomplish that.  As I said, one person has already 
committed and another is waiting for the contract/legal paperwork and 
will then commit.

At our next board meeting we are going to discuss the idea of 
developing and selling our second phase in "design clusters", where 3-5 
houses are designed and built together. In this scheme, if we adopt it, 
the first design cluster would be sold at the lower rate and that would 
fund the infrastructure and the common elements (woodshop, greenhouse, 
parking, garden, commons) for the rest of the design clusters.

Just to add an overview to all this, the first phase of Sharingwood is 
17 units and a commonhouse.  The selling of the first phase (17 
memberships) paid off all the debt for the land and infrastructure. We 
are building a commonhouse, starting this summer, in phases, with 
phase1 being funded from startup capital from the existing members. 
Houses in the first phase are independent and designed and built by the 
owners. The proceeds from the sale of phase2 memberships will be used 
to develop  phase2, common elements and payback some of the startup for 
thethe second phase of our commonhouse.