Cohousing-L Mailing List: financial snooping

[Leah (drsweetie]

Hi! I am part of the finance committee at Fordyce street cohousing. I am 
wondering how deep other groups delved into each other's finances during 
development. When we started, we made a requirement of a mortgage 
pre-authorization and a simple form asking where they plan to get the down 
payment, etc. I soon learned that it takes little more than a pulse to get a 
pre-auth. When it came closer to taking out a construction loan we started to 
put together people's financial forms, etc. There was one or 2 members where we 
thought "gosh, their income seems really low to afford this house" and we asked 
them for more info and they mapped out their plans for living on ramen noodles 
for the rest of their lives, etc. Actually their plans seemed kind of 
reasonable and we figured they were adults that could make their own decisions 
about finances. We are less than a month from breaking ground, and recently, 
one of the "close to the financial edge" families thought about dropping out due
 to affordability issues. Their dropping out would have put us in significant 
financial distress and probably delayed our loan and our project. They decided 
in the end that they couldn't do that to the group and stayed in, but now other 
members are saying that we should have looked closer at their finances. 
  How far did others go, and does anyone have ideas about drawing the line 
between nosiness and assurances that people can make it?

                
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