Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Sweat Equity/3 weird things

[Judy (BAXTER%EPIHUB]

dthomass [at] ccs.carleton.ca (David Thomasson)     Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 
wrote (re sweat equity) :

My preference is to be my own general contractor and control the
sub-contracting in order to tender only those things I can't do
myself. I've done this with arts groups who were building or
renovating, and informally by bartering with people on all sorts of
projects here and there. This is also what friends of mine have done.
Just hire outside help for what you really need. As for the bank you
need a cooperative one that is confident you will do good work, but
this is possible.
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Possible?  Yes.  But I get nervous and agree with Rob Sandelin, who wrote
"- One caution about sweat equity.  Many lending institutions are very
fussy about who does what.  If you are planning to do sweat equity on
something the bank has a stake in, be sure to consult with them before
you base any financial plans on using sweat equity to save money."

Our 1st developer (they dumped us for bigger fish) told us you can't have more
than  3 "weird"  (or unusual?) things, if you want to get lending institutions
to finance you, and the first one is cohousing, even if you play it down.  I
suspect sweat equity comes in here too.  My understanding is that the banks
want to know that they will have something finished and salable if the project
falls apart.  And they don't trust "our" skills.  We ARE talking about some
folks having unfinished attics they can later finish off.

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, (MoCoCo)
Twin Cities Area, Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota
e-mail: baxter [at] epivax.epi.umn.edu