Cohousing-L Mailing List: Construction Loan Financing (fwd)

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

Gilda Iriarte <iriarte [at] herald.infi.net>
is the author of the message below but due to a problem it was posted
by the Fred the list manager: owner-cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

Dear Friends:  I would like to hear from all those cohousing communities
who obtained construction loans from banking institutions as to: 

1. What kind of personal guarantees were required?  From whom? How were
they structured?  Were the personal guarantees unlimited (covering all the
assets of the individual) or limited and for how much ? 

2. What was the pre-sale requirement ?  

3. Did you build the project in stages (to minimize the Bank's exposure)?
If you staged it, how did it affect construction costs ?

4. How much equity participation did the Bank require (of the total
project cost) ? 

5. What other issues were important in structuring the loan ?

6. What Bank or Banks were involved ?

I am structuring a construction loan request for Synergy Cohousing and
would appreciate your comments and suggestions.  We don't have a developer
with deep pockets, so we have to get very creative. 

Thank you.
Gilda Iriarte (email:iriarte [at] herald.infi.net)