Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: securities regulations

[RAYGASSER (RAYGASSER]

I ain't no lawyer, but......
We were told early on that we couldn't offer anyone a house. We could talk
about CoHo & what we wanted to do. Technically, we were supposed to say
something like: "This is not an offering. An offering can only be made
by prospectus". We almost went to the extent of getting tee-shirts made
with that statement on them. It's now a running joke.

Also, make sure that in anything that people sign there are lots of CAPITAL
LETTER PHRASES stating very clearly that any money put into anything you're
doing is AT RISK and that by accepting money you aren't IN ANY WAY 
guaranteeing anyone a house or a lot, or anything at all.Not even an OPTION
on any of the above.

In order to avoid needing to put together a prospectus (which is quite
expensive), we applied to the atty general of NY for a "no action" letter,
which basically said that all of us who have put up our hard-earned green have
been intimately involved in all phases of the design & devlopment of the
project, that we are the developers and are building for our own use, not
for speculative re-sale, blah-blah-blah, and we expect him to give us the
OK to go ahead unencumbered. Should be hearing back shortly. Keep 'em
crossed!

Ray Gasser
EcoVillage at Ithaca, NY
raygasser [at] delphi.com