Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: renter and resale policies

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Way back when I was doing membership tours, I used to ask prospective
members, what THEY could offer the community in terms of resources and
skills. This put a few people off, and I was OK with that, since the goal
was to bring out, as Joani Blank said so well, we expect you to share your
time and talents. You can filter people in and out quite easily depending on
how you give a tour. For example, I used to make a point of tolerance and
acceptance and specifically would mention gay/lesbians. This also chased off
some folks whose values did not include that.  When you are a well
established community you can figure out what the common grounds are in your
community and you are wise to communicate those during tours.

One of the problems that some groups have to deal with is the transitin of
dissaffected members, who just want to sell and get out of this mess. These
types of painful transitions can be difficult, since usually communication
has already broken down. This has only happen to us once, and to circumvent
the clueless and not very cooperative realtor we places a kiosk with signs
and phamphlets on the community right of way, directly in front of the home
in question. Then we had an intercept team who intervened at every house
tour that was given. Eventually a more cooperative realtor came into the
scence and actually agreed to split the commission if we found a buyer which
we readily did. 

We don't have a resale policy (other than the legal requirements in the
CC&R's) but we do have an expectation that anyone considering living here be
given a full tour and have a time to meet people and talk about and learn
about what they are getting into. Granted, there are lots of things people
still get to learn about once they live here, but at least they understand
that.


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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