Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: financial planning

[Denise Meier and/or Michael Jacob (dmmj]

On Wed, 25 Sep 1996 LPManiccia [at] aol.com wrote:

> Another major unanswered question for us is how to handle members who have
> made large sum investments who want to leave the group.  When/how do they get
> their money back, assuming the project goes through to completion?  Do they
> get paid interest for having their money tied up for a period of time?  Do
> they get their money refunded as soon as another household joins the group or
> at the completion of the project?  We have made our dues non-refundable, so
> this is only applying to the large sum investments.
> Thanks!
> 

What we did about this is say that you get your money back when we're sold
out, plus one; in other words, after the project is full, and then another
household wants in, the first one who wanted to leave gets their money
from the new household. We felt we had to do this during the development
process, because much of the money is spent along the way. If people
wanted to leave we would all have to come up with additional money to buy
them out, which would be hard for our members who are stretched already to
make their own capital contributions. 

Good luck making these hard decisions. The best advice we got on dealing
with money is to be open, as hard as it is. Don't sweep people's issues
about money under the rug - deal with them!

Denise Meier
Jewell Hill, Sebastopol, California