Cohousing-L Mailing List: (no subject)

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello,

	At Jamaica Plain Cohousing each equity household put up a capital 
contribution of 5% (later 7%) of their expected unit price.  Beyond that, 
households could pay extra as a member loan.  This contribution 
earned interest at 15% in the risky early stages, 10% in the middle 
stages, and the rate of the construction loan once that loan was secured. 
Both the capital contribution and the member loan were at risk of loss if 
the project failed, and both of them, as well as the interest generated on 
the member loan, was credited towards the unit price at move-in.  Thus 
early households had an opportunity to make a risky but high-interest loan 
that later households didn't have available to them.

	The other main advantages that early households had were: (1) we 
chose units in order of the date that a household became an equity member, 
and (2) early households were in on the early decisions that played a 
significant role in how the place eventually looked (for example, a choice 
between the actually-adopted U-shaped building around a central courtyard 
with an external corridor to the unit entrances and a box-type building 
with an internal corridor sitting in the middle of the property, decided 
when we had around 10 of the final 30 households on board).  All the 
choice that the final households got was at most a chance to choose 
between two color schemes for their carpets and walls!

Regards,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing


Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:15:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: "R.N. Johnson" <cohoranda [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Deposits vs earned interest
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Message-ID: <641729.25484.qm [at] web63301.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

We did that at New Brighton Cohousing.? The orginal three households put down 
the first 30K, the next few households put down the next installment of earnest 
money, and every one else paid at the end. We just dealt with it as if it were 
an early partial downpayment.
Randa Johnson
New Brighton Cohousing
Aptos,CA