Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Realtors / Marketing

[PattyMara (PattyMara]

At Tierra Nueva Cohousing on the central CA coast we did hire a real estate 
person to help us with marketing.  We paid her a percentage (1.5 % or so) for 
every unit sold and something like .5% for the units that were already spoken 
for when she signed on.  It ended up being something like $40,000 in 
commissions for the year and a half that she was under contract with us.  

We hired her because we were so burned out and stretched too thin.  The core 
group of 9 families were "run hard and put away wet" by that time.  Although 
it was something we needed to do (delegate work to a paid professional) we 
had a difficult time finding someone and the person we hired was not a good 
fit for the job.   To be fair to her, it may be an impossible scenario to 
find anyone in the realm of real estate folk who can really get the concept 
of cohousing...

Liz is right about the constraints of CA and federal laws about fair housing 
and discrimination.  Our agent was always stressing about losing her broker's 
license when anything came up smelling like favoritism or choosing buyers.  
We essentially sold our homes to anyone who came round interested who 
qualified financially.  And in the long run, it worked okay.  

As the person who worked most with our agent, I would say that I had to 
continue doing the bulk of the marketing because I was the one so integrated 
with the group heart and mind...but our agent did the mountains of paper work 
that are required at the end during escrow and I was grateful for her ability 
to handle that for the group. 

What was absolutely essential in the long run was that whenever we did site 
tours or presentations, our agent was not the one for the job.  Because she 
wasn't going to live here.  Interested folks who came on tours with her were 
disappointed that she wasn't a member...so it ended up that we had to 
continue doing the talks, booths at earthday and farmers market, 
presentations, radio interviews, and hundreds of site tours.  That got very, 
very exhausting. 

The long and short of it is, you are going to have to do the lion's share of 
the marketing work yourself.  Pace yourselves, get lots of help from group 
members (to avoid just a small core of you who "know how to do tours"---get 
everyone involved in learning the ropes) and trust that the end will come.  
You will sell all the units.  

The Golden Rule of cohousing marketing is:  If you built it, they will 
come...at the end.  When there are houses to walk around in and choose from.  
They will come in droves.  They will be there in such numbers, coming out of 
your freshly primed woodwork, that you will be shaking your head in 
wonderment.  Because when you *really* needed them, earlier on, when there 
was nothing to see, nothing to walk through, and only designs on paper and a 
lot of risk, they weren't there.  Some of them were trying to develop their 
own cohousing in other parts of the state or country, and will come to your 
project at the end when their own falls through.   Some of them were too 
skeptical of the risk involved and needed to wait until the reality of 
construction.  And some of them were just meant to come at the end, with full 
tanks of energy and enthusiasm to contribute to the group.  It's all good.  

Real estate agents didn't seem to be successful at finding buyers OR renters. 
 One of our buyers lives out of town, and planned to rent her unit for about 
three years until she retires.  She hired a local real estate agent/property 
manager to find tenants.  The agent worked for over 3 months and did not find 
a single interested person.  It was the most baffling thing.  When the buyer 
finally hired one of us already living here to do the same work (advertising, 
putting fliers up at community bulletin boards,  giving tours etc) he found a 
tenant in less then a week.  And later on, when one of the rooms from another 
home became available,  the remaining renter put up some fliers and got 30 
responses.  And had a host of folk to choose from.  Now you might ask, why 
couldn't the agent get the same responses?  My only guess is that cohousing 
needs to be promoted by the folks who live here, who's hearts are in the 
community, who really eat, breathe and poop cohousing.  It is just too 
different a concept for traditional real estate agents to wrap their silk 
jackets around.  Hopefully this will change as more and more intentional 
communtities bloom and grow.  

Warmly,
Patty Mara Gourley
Tierra Nueva Cohousing, Oceano, CA
Where all the wheelchair accessible pathways are stained a gorgeous 
ochre/terra cotta color (which we did by sweeping on a solution of ferrous 
sulfate-a fertilizer-and water.  It produces the most beautiful faux stone 
patterning.)  We're going to stain the other sidewalks and pathways with a 
darker red rock-terra cotta color.  Maybe even the allen block walls as well. 
 

And where we have 3, sometimes 4, community meals per week.  Non-mandatory 
cook and clean teams, but fueled by the expectation that if you eat, you cook 
or clean at least 2 times a month.  It is not policed, and seems to work out 
fine.