Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: ...Cohousing in existing neighborhood (Boston area)

[Maren Leyla Cooke (maren]

<Stuart Staniford-Chen <stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu> replied to my inquiry  
about spreading our community into our existing neighborhood>

>1) Do you (collectively) have enough equity in the existing co-op  
house >to borrow part of the purchase price of the new house against  
that?
One of the things we're not trying to do is for the two of us who own  
this house to become Somerville Land Barons.  We might compromise that  
somewhat if friends do buy it, by chipping in on the down payment or  
some such arrangement, or by buying some of the land (the other yard is  
significantly bigger than our yard, and by shifting the border we could  
both make that house more affordable and protect its yard as open space  
(making it impossible for a developer to build another house on it).   
But we don't want to go into this by ourselves -- the idea is to build  
more community, which doesn't make sense to do one-sidedly.

>2) Is there any possibility of the owners renting the house to you with  
>you purchasing an option to buy in a year or two when you have things  
>more together?
They need $$ for their next house... and we already have a place to  
live.  Since it is a two-family, even if it is purchased by some random  
unknowns we might be able to hook up friends as potential tenants in  
whichever half the new owners aren't occupying.  But opening up the  
yards, sharing gardening and meals etc. and closely linking the  
households (however many there are) will be trickier without  
community-oriented people in there from the start.

>A final suggestion for the future - we have found it much better to  
make >a deal *before* a house actually goes on the market.  That way the  
real
>estate folks don't get a piece of the pie - which makes the remainder  
>bigger for the seller and buyer to share.
They're starting out trying to market it themselves, so no realtors are  
involved yet.  We talked about it at length before it went on the  
market, and have been talking with friends, etc. -- but the typical  
combination of good salaries with high-pressure, time-crunch jobs has  
gotten in our way (e.g., one person could probably income-qualify  
singlehandedly, but she just can't deal with it all right now).

Thanks for your input!

                        -- Maren.