Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Appraisers and larger-than-needed cohousing units

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

  On 23-Feb-95, Jim Snyder-Grant wrote in part:

> Re: Cohousing costs and budgets
> Housing (land and construction) is way expensive out here in the Boston
> suburbs, plus in order to get to a reasonable match between appraisals
> and construction costs we had to build relatively large houses.

>Bob Morrison asks: Is there anything we can do to free ourselves from
>this tyranny? I am speaking not only for myself but also for many 
others when I
 >say that I don't want or need a large home and don't want to pay for space I
>don't need, whether the home is in cohousing or not.

I think it was PT Barnum, of Barnum and Bailey Circus fame who said:  
"The amazing thing about the dancing bear is not well it dances, but 
that it dances at all".  The fact is, Cohousing is enormously 
experimental at this point in its development and that banks have 
funded projects at all is quite amazing.  Banks are not usually noted 
for being terrifically progressive.  Five years ago there was no such 
thing as Cohousing.  Maybe five years from now there will be a hundred 
successful projects to "prove" that cooperatively designed housing is 
salable.  Until then, expect the financial waters to be kind of stormy.

Put this in the context of the banks.  They are under pressure from the 
S&L mess, and other such boondoggles to be a little more, ah, cautious, 
about loaning money.  Along comes a 4 million dollar project designed 
for "social cooperation and pedestrian environments" with a commonhouse 
and group meals, and no three car garage.  The fact that any projects 
have gotten loans is quite remarkable, and each success brings more 
success.  So the pioneers have to endure some hardships.  We are making 
it easier for the next generation. These things take time.

Rob Sandelin
Puget Sound Cohousing Network
Building a better society, one neighborhood at a time