Cohousing-L Mailing List: The work share dollar value of doing coho property management with volunteers vs hiring it out

[Charles Maclean (advocate]

 Fellow Cohousers,

The Portland Trillium Hollow Co-Housing Board wants to better understand the
cost
and value of self maintenance.  We have a Work Fair Share policy that
provides for our residents handling all administration and maintenance, only
hiring technical/professional help like electrical and elevator repair. 

Under our work share agreement with all residents and owners, we expect each
unit and each adult resident/owner to provide a minimum number of hours of
work each month to support and maintain the physical plant and grounds
maintenance and general administration. 

We are interested in developing a general understanding of the cost of
hiring a property management firm to contract for these same or similar
services and their administration.

We know intuitively that we keep our monthly fees low by doing the work
ourselves and we also know that working together strengthens our social
connections and makes it easier to manifest our values of sustainability,
living simply and community.

At the same time, we would like to be able to quantify in some way the
amount that we actually save by doing the work ourselves.  So we are asking
if any of you contract out your maintenance, landscaping, building repair,
finance and administration, etc., that you please share with us the
following information: 

1.  How many units do you have, approximately how much land are you
responsible for, and what is the per unit cost of property management?

2.  What does that property management include:
     *   Which common elements do you have and how extensive are they?
     *   Landscaping: how much area do you have landscaped, and what kind of
maintenance do you have done?

     *   What other kinds of services are included in your contract?

3.  What are the pros and cons you have discovered from using a property
management firm contracted by the HOA?  Why did your HOA decide to take this
path? What kinds of activities do you have to build and maintain community
cohesion?

4.  Other thoughts?

Please send your responses to Don Benson benson6451 [at] Aol.com.  I will create
a summary and send it back to the list.

Thanks for your input.

Don Benson

Association of Unit Owners of Trillium Hollow Cohousing Neighborhood 

HOA Board of Directors

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