Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Banks Who Financed Cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jan 27, 2007, at 10:12 PM, Steve Faber wrote:

> We shopped around to about 15 banks, about 10 would agree to meet
> with us after looking at our performa.  7 larger, national banks that
> had bought out local banks turned us down or gave us unreasonable
> terms (25% down, 100% presold).

One piece of information that is important in this is to say whether 
you are working with an experienced real estate developer or not. When 
a group is doing development themselves, banks will not be happy 
because they feel unsure that the project will get built. Developing 
real estate is a very complex task and banks do not fund inexperienced 
people, like they don't fund business start-ups.

Gilda Iriarti who used to do the loans for the Cohousing Company 
advised me long ago to go to the bank when you are looking at 
developers because they know who has brought in projects on time and 
under budget. They will "take a chance" on someone they have worked 
with before.

Ironically, I suspect the larger the bank gets, the less willing they 
are to take a chance.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org