Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House and Unit Sizes

[Bitner/Stevenson (lilbert]

> I have some more questions for all of you.
> 
> To estimate total costs and individual unit costs including the common
> house, we are trying to determine what the ideal common house size should
> be based on having approximately 25 households.
>
> Is there a certain square foot per household that seems to work well?
>
> What has your experience been with it being either too large, too small or
> just right?
>
> What should the average unit size be of a diversified community.  We were
> told just over 900 square feet.

Who told you your average unit size should be 900sf? That is only slightly
larger than our smallest (one bedroom) units. And we have some of the
smallest houses in cohousing. That number is way, way off.

We also have a smallish commonhouse, and I think it's around 2000sf, but
that's just an estimate. It feels just right to me, but if we had more money
and space, we probably would have built a larger CH so we could do more
stuff, like not having to unfold the ping pong table every time we want to
use it.

Square footage there seems to me to depend on how you want to use it. For
instance, someone with guest rooms will have more square footage than we do,
but maybe they have similar dining and living room size. (I wonder what the
correlation is between CH size and income in the community, but I'll bet
it's pretty close.) I would do some brainstorming about what uses you want
to have in the CH, and go see some that are up and running to get a better
feel for what you want. There are also several people on this list who have
seen many commonhouses from whom I am sure you will hear.;)
--
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California