Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Extrapolation of unit sizes from surveys

[Hyghroad (Hyghroad]

Dear Carey:

I don't have too much to share, but here are a few tidbits from our 
experience here in Vermont.

 - I think including some kind of office/den space in any unit is critical, 
people really look for that.

 - Our smallest unit is 2 bedroom, but our units have gotten costly. Having 
one bedrooms or studios would have helped us with the affordability issue. 
Though, most people that were looking for more affordable units were young 
couples 
or families so a small unit may have only served them in the short term.

- Once you make a design decision try to stick with it. Architectural fees 
really add up. As most co-housers will tell you, making changes to Arch. plans 
or doing custom work can really hurt the bottom line of the budget.

- We set aside lots that people can buy on which to build there own small 
custom home. We sell the lots and leave the design up to the owner with review 
from the Design Review Team. Almost half of our units are these lots. This left 
an open end for us. 


Kelly Devine
Common Pastures
aka Champlain Valley Cohousing
Charlotte, Vermont
http://www.champlainvalleycohousing.org
802-425-5030
hyghroad [at] aol.com

In a message dated 10/23/2005 4:03:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
arbcoho [at] yahoo.com writes:


> Hi all, 
> 
> Here at Arboretum Cohousing in Madison, Wisconsin,
> we're pretty excited at being on the verge of having a
> signed offer to purchase our site. From then, we will
> have a limited amount of time to do marketing, design,
> and all the rest of the development work. I'm hoping
> this group can help us and our architect with a
> question. I spent some time searching for relevant
> posts (including using the terms in this subject
> heading and randomly skimming the archives), and
> didn't find much. 
> 
> Here's our dilemna: we currently have 11 active
> 'equity' members, and are planning for 40 units. We
> did a survey, and the vast majority (9-10) want a two
> bedroom unit. What we need help deciding is how to
> extrapolate that to decide the unit distribution for
> our 40 units, since it probably won't be a linear
> extrapolation (i.e. we don't plan on having 36 two
> bedroom units) We realize that we can design the
> distribution to target certain demographics: more
> larger units = more families, studios target more of
> the edges. However, we want to find a mix that will
> accomodate as many different demographics as possible,
> yet still help us sell all our units. We're also doing
> research into the local condo market, but we
> especially would like to know how other coho groups
> figured this out. 
> 
> If you are willing to share your stories, wonderful.
> If you know of other threads or documents that might
> help, and can give me leads to find them, great.
> Thanks so much.
> 
> In community, 
> Carey Dachik
>