Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Resales- are waiting lists worth it?

[Deborah Behrens (debbeh]

Lynn

IMO, If you're not totally burned out on marketing, do your best to keep a
small marketing effort alive.  You actually have a living community to show
visitors.  It's an asset.  Share your enthusiasm about your new community
with your visitors.  We did get terribly burned out at Highline and let
resale marketing go for a long time.  Even so, we kept getting calls and
visitors.  But, with a series of resales recently, we've gotten more
motivated.  We have had a number of residents who joined for 'non-cohousing'
reasons, or whose idea of cohousing didn't match our reality, and several of
them have moved on.  Others have had to leave for others reasons: health,
jobs, etc.  You will have some attrition as well, for a variety of reasons.

Create info about your community to hand to prospective buyers and renters
(The Cohousing Network has created a new generic cohousing flyer that it
will begin distributing soon to communities who are group members of TCN)
We've found that it's important to get all of the prospective residents
information about what cohousing is, and what our community's goals and
structure are before they buy.  Otherwise you get unhappy, disaffected
neighbors, who will move out soon.  Better to let them know *before* they
move in whether it's a type of community that they would feel comfortable
in.  (But be careful not to violate any anti-discrimination laws in your
literature.)  

Create your own website - there are many ways to get free or inexpensive
sites.  Make sure you are listed on the www.cohousing.org communities list.
Join TCN as a group member, if you haven't already.  Even after you're
built, TCN can be a valuable source of new residents, as well as advice
about living in community.  Help us keep TCN a strong nation-wide (and
beyond) organization, and you will benefit greatly as a cohousing community.


Welcome visitors.  If people call, invite them over for a community dinner
or potluck.  If strangers wander thru the community, don't just ignore them.
Make it a policy for whoever sees them to welcome them, ask them what they
think about what they're seeing as they wander around.  Maybe give them a
quick spiel on cohousing - they may never have heard of cohousing and just
wandered in by accident. Or, if you're not confident as a tour guide, or
don't have time, have some fliers centrally available that you can give
them.  Enthusiasm can make up for a lack of specific knowledge about things
like cohousing 'ancient' history and statistics.  

Keep a list of those interested people.  Keep in contact with them
(community 'buddies' maybe?)

Create some sort of 'associate residency' so that the people on the waiting
list can become part of the community if they wish (dinner invites, etc -
they might even want to help on community work days).  Invite them to
meetings - they're going to have to find out sooner or later that even in
the best of communities, meetings aren't all touchy feely wonderful, that
there can still be disagreements and contention.  We all have personalities,
and sometimes we don't mesh as well as we'd like.  If you have a community
newsletter, include the people on the waiting list in the distribution,
perhaps for a small fee for postage ($25/year?)

Many of them will end up going somewhere else, but some will be there when
you have a resale.  Some of our homes we have been able to fill with
cohousing inquiries, and some have been regular real estate sales.  Some of
the sellers paid full price commissions, some were able to save by
negotiating the fee, since they already had a ready buyer.   We have had
some of our sales done with only a flat rate paperwork fee, or a 1%
commission for pushing the paperwork.  You may not even need a real estate
agent, a lawyer can sometimes do all the same paper pushing.  This effort
could even encourage the seller with a ready community-supplied buyer to
make a donation to the community instead of paying a hefty real estate
commission.  

Create some sort of more in-depth orientation materials for new residents
(owners and renters) - what are the first things they need to know about
living in your community - recycling, trash day, pertinent cc&r points,
meals, teams, home owner fee details, pets, etc  (Thanx to Santa Fe for
their wonderful example)  That way new residents won't be in the dark about
all the 'common knowledge' things that everyone else already just takes for
granted.  And their neighbors won't get upset at them for flouting 'rules'
that they haven't learned yet.

And your list could help the next cohousing community in your town get
started - a ready core group of interested people.  If someone wants to
start another community, offer them your common house for their meetings -
then their prospective core members will get to see a community in action.
Let their builders, bankers, lenders contact yours for references.  

Don't forget to mention in each and every email what community you're
representing, and where it is.  

Good Luck
Debbie Behrens
Highline Crossing, Littleton CO
(also TCN board member)

p.s.  We're having major issues right now about rentals vs resales.  Some of
our community members equate ability and desire to do a mortgage with the
ability to be a good community member.  And they worry about their property
values going down.  What's a good way to respond to this?  IMO it's a red
herring. We have about 10% of our homes as rentals by their owners (4.5/40
homes).  Some of the owners are on site, some not.  I would like to get
statistics about rentals and property values in other communities, and how
much do renters contribute as a community member, compared to the resident
owners.  Has anyone in any built community felt pressured to sell a home
that they would prefer to have rented out?  Thanx...Debbie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lynn Nadeau [SMTP:welcome [at] olympus.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 2:42 PM
> This is addressed to groups which have had resales, and which do not (as 
> with coops) have a built-in connection with finding the new owners. 
> As we approach selling the last of our 24 home sites, there is a debate 
> about how much energy and money we should invest in continued outreach 
> and advertising.  <clipped> 
> 
>