Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordability?

[Robert Heinich (robert]

April,

Cohousing can made more affordable but building houses is still expensive.

Eno Commons started off as the affordable cohousing community in the Triangle 
area in North Carolina.

Some of the cost-limiting practices were:
* We had only 2 house plans for 22 houses.  No custom houses 
  and we tried to limit options.  
  (To quote Jessie Handforth Kome , now of Eastern Village, said, 
  "Change Orders are Death!")
  * Almost every house had eggshell interior
  * we had a palette of outside colors
* We went with a production builder so multiple houses could be worked
  on at the same time.
* We had a builder liaison to limit the # of folks contacting the builder
  and we pooled our questions.

we built above average home for an average price.  Unfortunately, this did not 
mean that everyone that started us with stayed with us.  There was a housing 
boom 1998-1999 so building supplies cost went up and some could afford the 
increase cost.  Despite this, we were still less expensive than the other 
cohousing communities in our area.

I have been told that building houses is juggling schedule, quality and cost 
but you can only control two of the factors.

You will need to decide on whether to live closer to Albany (more expensive 
land but you have access to services and perhaps a reduced dependency on cars 
or live further out (less expansive land but you may not have 
water/sewer/garbage/cable/mass transportation...).  Arguments can be made for 
either option.

-Robert Heinich
 Eno Commons Cohousing
 Durham, NC
 where we live in the city but have a rural feel.