Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cost estimates

[Diana E Carroll (dianaecarroll]

Seems unlikely.  I've had friends and acquaintances build or rebuilding 
their single-family-homes and the cost overruns and delays happened to 
them, too.  Invariably.

I've been involved in many projects, non real estate related, and 
honestly...almost all come in after deadline and overbudget.  Why? 
Human nature.  We want it cheap and we want it fast, so we unconsciously 
minimize the projections, and then are surprised when the projections 
aren't accurate.

I don't know that including a professional totally offsets this 
tendency.  Professionals are paid to make their clients happy.  This is 
how it goes in my projects (cohousing and otherwise):

Clients: "We want X, Y and Z"
Professionals: "That will cost $A and take B months"
Clients: "Too long!  Too expensive.  How can we cut costs and time?"
Professionals: "Well...um...drop Z?  That would reduce price some"
Clients: "Yes, drop Z.  Anything else?  Please tell us yes!!! PLLLEASE"
Professionals: "Well...um...you could trim back on X and Y and maybe we 
can squeeze 12 hour workdays out of the workers.  If everything went 
PERFECTLY we could get it done by date Q"
Clients: "Yes!  Perfect!  Q is perfect!  We're ready to sign on the 
dotted line and pay you large sums of money."
Professionals: "Whew...almost lost that one."

And, of course, it didn't work that way.  The clients were SO eager to 
see lower numbers that they were ready to hear "we could maybe kinda 
sorta get it faster" by a professional eager to please them as written 
in stone...and always ALWAYS end up disappointed.

The projects that come in on schedule and on budget are the projects 
where the clients aren't pushing for lower projections up front when the 
schedule and budget are set.

- Diana

On 2/14/2010 12:11 PM, Cindy T wrote:
> I'm wondering if a community where each person was responsible for building 
> their own house, with some construction guidelines established, would be able 
> to avoid this problem?  Maybe communities with experience doing this 
> successfully could share their experiences?
>
> Cindy
>
> > As I've read many posts to this list, I've learned more about how the
> > price of a cohousing home or community can quickly spiral beyond the
> > financial limits of some members. Hiring good professionals probably
> > results in heading off some unanticipated expenses and makes planning
> > departments, banks, etc. take the project more seriously.
> >
> > Home construction seems to be exceptionally susceptible to delays and
> > cost overruns. Maybe I'm not hearing about the projects or homes that
> > come in on time and at or less than the original budget.
>
>                                         
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