Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The "lot" development model

[Pablo Halpern (phalpern]

This discussion has really brought out how people in different circumstances 
see issues differently.

The "lot" model of building cohousing only works if lots are cheap enough 
for the people building the cheapest house. This may sound like a 
requirement for *any* cohousing, but it is not. New View's land is much too 
expensive for the people building the cheapest houses. We rely on the 
developer's ability (we are the developer, in this case) to sell larger, 
more expensive units at a smaller land cost/final cost ratio than the 
smaller, less expensive units. If we sold land to the members as lots, the 
people building larger units would get a bargain while the poeple building 
smaller units would get shafted.

Real-life example (numbers are very rough, just to make the point):

Our common costs and land work out to about $100,000 per house. If we sold 
plots at $100,000 apiece, then someone building a a $80,000 2-bedroom 
structure would pay $180,000 total for their house and land. This is 
reasonable or a bit high. However, someone building a house 50% bigger that 
costs $120,000 to build would pay $220,000 for their house - quite a bargain 
for such a large house. Someone else building a small $60,000 1-2 bedroom 
house would pay $160,000 for their house - way above market rate for such a 
small house.

Some of this could be fixed by adjusting the lot sizes and prices of plots, 
but in a community where "my land" is not well defined or very important, 
you're not really helping much. We looked into this, and the small houses 
would just not have enough yard while the large houses had more than they 
needed. We didn't want to set up so strong a "class" system in our 
community.

Conclusion: The lot model *does* work if your land is a relatively modest 
portion of your development costs. It solves a lot of problems, including 
pricing policy for houses, consensus on house designs, the ability of some 
houses to be owner-built or have some amount of sweat equity, etc. However, 
it doesn't work in many parts of the country owing to high land costs. In 
those places, cost-shifting is required in order to prevent pricing out 
moderate-income people.

- Pablo

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Pablo Halpern              (508) 435-5274         phalpern [at] world.std.com

New View Neighborhood Development, Acton, MA, U.S.A.
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