Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cutting Housing Costs

[BPaiss (BPaiss]

Harry,

Suggesting that people can cut the cost of their housing by 40-70% by buying
the materials and building it themselves ignores several critical things.

- People must have both the time and experience to build a house themselves.
 

- When calculating the cost they don't include their time.  

- It assumes that people have enought money or credit to purchase the
materials since very few banks, if any,  in this country will make a loan on
an owner-built CoHousiong community.

Perhaps you have some different laws in Canada that encourage this kind of
savings.  I wish we could say the same here in the US.

The issue of sweat equity is one that we have been struggling with since we
began.  I would love to hear from groups that have been even partially
sucessful with sweat equity on individual homes within their communities.

Bill
bpaiss [at] aol.com