Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Projected Costs vs Real Costs

[BPaiss (BPaiss]

Rob,

Your question regarding the cost increases at Highline and in CoHousing
projects in general are, as usual, excellent.  Most future CoHo residents
understandably would like to know the cost of their homes as early as
possible.  This places pressure on whoever is making those cost projections
to esimate the initial costs on sometimes very little hard information.
 Requiremnents imposed by the local government agencies, financing
institutions or other approval agencies (the architectural control committee
in the case of Highline) and unexpected surprises like price increases can
all increase the price of a project sometimes very late in the process.

In order to give home buyers realistic prices, designs must be completed (no
more significant changes!) and bids received from subcontractors from
everything from pushing dirt to landscaping.  As you might expect, this
requires a tremendous amount of work and time to complete and the group must
be willing to spend a tidy sum of money just to get to that point.  Estimates
must be created just to give the group enough confidence that it worth moving
ahead.

As Mark mentioned in his eariler post, there were circumstances at Highline
that pushed up prices both in required materials, landscaping and time to get
approvals that were not anticipated in the beginning.  My suggestion is to do
as much homework as possible before committing large sums of money.
 Unfortunately even experienced developers like Wonderland need to make
SWAG's (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guesses) at the early part of a project.

I can't emphasis enought the important of educating people about what makes
up the price of their home and how those can be affected by boith internal
and external forces. Only about 50% of the price of a new home is in the
"sticks and bricks".  Early estimates are just estimates...but time and time
again when people hear that the preliminary estimated price of their home
will be between $90,000 and $140,000 they hear, "$90,000,  great I can afford
that."

Development is far from a science and except for us Coho weirdo's and custom
home buyers, future resdients don't usually get involved until all these
uncertainties are sorted out and we are walking through a completed model
home.  Hope this is useful.

In Community,

Bill
Nyland, Rocky Mountain CoHousing Association, The CoHousing Network
bpaiss [at] aol.com