Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: what info do new/prospective owners need?

[Joelyn Malone (JKMalone]

Here in Minnesota, there are legal requirements that all the 
organizational documents plus other "disclosure" items such as the 
latest balance sheet and annual budget be made available to the 
prospective buyer. The law started with "60 days in advance" of the 
closing, then was whittled down to 10 days, and now it's 5 days. We have 
very complicated documents so we try to give them to the potential buyer 
as soon as a purchase agreement is signed, as well as all documents that 
will need to be signed at closing. And they are assigned a "buddy" from 
the group who can answer questions.

We have two levels of agreements equivalent what Ken called  "community 
agreements" for our community. One is our official Rules and 
Regulations, which is a legal document referred to in our Bylaws and 
Condominium Declaration (I think the Declaration is equivalent to 
California's CCR&R's). The other is a collection of much looser 
agreements, suggestions, standards or whatever on "living together 
peacefully". The latter we are trying to round up and put in one 
document - yet to be named; I prefer "Agreements for Joyful 
Coho-existence". These are the ones that newcomers really get tripped up 
on, because they are buried in the Board Meeting Decision Summaries 
(yes, even that is hard to get through once you've been around 16 
years!) or even sometimes committee minutes, or just posted in the 
kitchen, woodworking shop,... wherever. So, there are some levels of 
agreements that would be nearly impossible to codify (e.g., is it okay 
or not to place furniture and decorations in front of a seldom-used door 
in our library?).  You'd  need  one of  those "Culture Shock-France" 
books to capture everything. (Hey , there's an idea for the next big 
Coho book: Culture Shock-Cohousing! But of course, every community's 
would be different.)