Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Has anyone run into this in their cohousing development?

[Katie Henry (katie-henry]

At Eastern Village, in the DC area, the slowdown in the market has  
definitely had an effect. Several units have been languishing on the  
market for many months, and other units sold for significantly less  
than they would have two years ago, but no foreclosures. The owners of  
the unsold units have kept up with their condo fees (at least as of  
January, when my board term ended and I stopped receiving delinquency  
reports).

The size of the community -- 56 cohousing units + 11 other units -- is  
an advantage in this respect. Having a few units in arrears wouldn't  
hurt too much. Any property deterioration is less a function of  
finances than of the difficulty of finding people to champion  
maintenance/repair work.

Katie
Eastern Village Cohousing
Silver Spring, MD

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Hello Everyone,

An article in today's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/business/15condo.html?em&ex=1210996800&en=1ebc381fa67f7183&ei=5087%0A 
) discusses the collateral damage to owners of condo units, in terms  
of unexpected assessments, unpaid condo fees, and finances-induced  
property deterioration, in developments where a significant fraction  
of units have been foreclosed. As far as I'm aware this hasn't been a  
problem in cohousing condominiums (definitely not in the ones I know  
about), but I thought I'd check it out on the list. Has anyone seen  
this come up in their community?

Curiously,
David Heimann
JP Cohousing