Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Here's my Visoin. Has anyone ever thought of a co-housing park-model park?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jan 13, 2008, at 9:30 PM, carrol crawford wrote:

> I'd call it  *Small-ville*. --Each unit having enough space to do  
> some gardening, and have some space between houses.  Common paths,  
> gardens, permaculture, etc.

I once subscribed to a Yahoo! group on tiny homes. I can't remember  
the right name but you can search and find it. They were talking about  
single house development but might give you other ideas as well. They  
are particularly strong on designing very small homes efficiently --  
like four people and a dog in 600 sq ft.

http://www.parkmodelexpress.com/index.htm

For anyone who hasn't looked at RVs recently (I've never seen anything  
not built in the 50's) take a look. For $25,000 to $45,000, you have a  
complete and _beautiful_ home. I couldn't find anything about square  
footage, insulation, or energy efficiency but you can send for more  
information.

> You'd need someone to buy the lot, the individuals could buy
> their own Park Model,or cabin. or build small houses.

Why not use a condominium structure for the land. Then each person  
would purchase and own a percentage of the total land. The prospective  
owners write "condo docs" that specify exactly what people own and  
what they can do with it, so you can limit the size of homes and  
things like that.

Then you could use the standard cohousing model of selling the units  
before you buy and construct the infrastructure on land. Do banks give  
mortgages on RVs? It seems they might at least on the land development  
(electricity, water, and plumbing).

Then you would probably be able to negotiate with a dealer to purchase  
a number of homes at the same time and get discounts. Since the homes  
are trucked from the factory, I would check to see what a truck  
carries and see if you can order a truck load. Or two.

I think this is a wonderful idea.

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