Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: financial snooping

[Eris Weaver (erisw]

Leah <drsweetie [at] yahoo.com> wrote
> 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. 

During our development, FrogSong also required a pre-authorization...but
once we had land and building designs, we also required folks to pony up
5% of their estimated home price. The contract we signed at that time
also stipulated that if you dropped out before final move-in, YOU DID
NOT GET YOUR DOWN PAYMENT BACK UNTIL ALL HOMES WERE SOLD. That prevented
cash-flow problems from people dropping out, taking their money, and
having unsold homes.

We did have a couple people pull out very last minute - while we did
have a solid waiting list, having these policies in place did 1)cut down
on people sitting on the fence for too long and 2) kept our last-minute
cash flow operational.

Eris
FrogSong, Cotati, CA