Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Professional Development vs. Self-Development

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jul 26, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Christine Johnson wrote:
> Just my opinion:  our cohousing community was developed with a
> professional developer, builder and project manager in place, all of
> whom had prior experience in cohousing development.   All the  
> owners in
> our community are bearing unanticipated costs because our builder and
> the project manager, did not meet the contract's requirements.

We had similar problems but when you have a developer, the developer  
is responsible for correcting any problems.

Once you move in, it is important to have an engineering study done  
immediately. There are firms that do this and you can find one  
through the Community Associations Institute. That study will  
identify deficiencies that must be corrected. We are still finding  
some but major ones were identified and corrected.

The developer was responsible for insisting that the contractor or  
third parties correct any identified deficiencies. This was done  
without legal action although we did have the notification of  
deficiencies written by our lawyer.

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