Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Financing CH, shared facilities?

[Glen Orcutt (gorcutt]

Louise Hunter asked:
>Can anyone out there give us the benefit of your experience on a 
>confusing apect of financing development and construction? 
>Specifically, have people gotten lenders to appraise housing unit 
>values to include the dollar value of the common house and other shared 
>facilities?

At Valley Oaks Village, our lender required a detailed appraisal of our
entire project - each unit, common building, out-buildings.  Appraisals are
a lot of B.S., but necessary
for the bank to loan $3 Million.  As a planned-unit development, each home
owns a share of the common facilities and thus it must be considered in with
everything else.

>Failing that, is there any other creative way you know of to finance 
>the costs of all construction and development?

There are always creative ways to finance things, but bank financing is
cheap compared to private financing.  All the financing mechanisms are
already set up as well (i.e. Construction loans, etc).

Glen Orcutt
Valley Oaks Village
Chico, CA
*We start on the Common Bldg (our first bldg) next week*