Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Foundation/Agency Funding

[Denise Meier and/or Michael Jacob (dmmj]

On Thu, 19 Dec 1996, Joani Blank wrote:

> 2) I don't understand why you are considering a separate mortgage for your
> common house. 

A very good reason to do this is that appraisals of cohousing are often
done as if they are condominiums, and when appraisers appraise condos,
they add very little value for the common facilities. In cohousing we put
a lot of money into the common facilities, and therefore the appraisals of
our units may not even match what they cost to build. In our case, for
instance, our common facilities are adding about $11,000 in cost, on
average, per unit. The appraiser told us he added about $5000 per unit in
what he considered added value. (We considered ourselves lucky he didn't
take it back out because of the lack of attached garages! )  In order to
cover that added $6000, each of our buyers would need to come up with more
of a down payment, since most banks will only loan a percentage of what it
appraises at, not what it costs to build. 

The ultimate goal here is to find an appraiser who "Gets it" about
cohousing. Removing the cost and "benefit" of the common house from the
equation can make your numbers look a lot better....Then you can raise the
money and try to get a bank loan to build the common house separately.

I believe  one cohousing group did this, but I sure can't remember which
one.

Denise Meier
Sebastopol, CA, USA