Cohousing-L Mailing List: Is your community Levying a Transfer Fee on the Selling/Buying Transaction?

[Charles Maclean (advocate]

Fellow Cohousers:

Are any cohousing communities imposing a Transfer Fee on the selling/buying
transaction?  And if so, how was this decided, how much is the fee, and what
have been the consequences.  And if not, has this been the result of a
decision?  And if so, we would like to know more about that decision
process.

1.  Many cohousing communities devote significant time, money and energy in
outreach.  Objectives seem generally to focus on the marketing of the
cohousing movement and their community.

The cohousing movement, developers, and individual owners benefit through
the various community outreach marketing efforts in several ways, but
primarily it supports, broadly and narrowly, the sale or resale of cohousing
units.

The cost of this promotion/outreach is usually paid for by owners of
occupied units as a part of the annual community budget.  This brings up an
interesting topic to explore with several dimensions, 

For architects and developers, individual community outreach is a very nice
service, from which they benefit at no cost, by the raising awareness and
bringing in potential new owners.  Interestingly there is not much visible
contact between the developer community and cohousing associations that
might yield some benefits to both, which is one of the explicit values and
intentions of cohousing.  

For individual unit owners, the outreach and marketing becomes personally
valuable when they become sellers, in that connections with potential buyers
may have already been developed.  Benefits can include significantly reduced
time and potentially reduced selling cost (e.g., real estate agent
commission). 

2.  All condominium based cohousing associations have the obligation of
providing a service to potential lenders to facilitate the process of unit
financing.  Specifically, each new lending process submits a form for
someone representing the association to complete and return describing their
financial condition, use, and the nature of the facilities.  Recently with
the lending industry, in an attempt to increase the value of their
portfolio, is requiring FHA Certification of condominium developments as a
condition for lending.  Again, someone representing the association has the
opportunity to spend time to support this process.

The point of this discussion is that in the broader condominium marketplace,
the cost of all or part of these efforts is often passed on to the buyers in
the form of a Transfer Fee, imposed by the association as a part of the
purchasing transaction.   The question then is are any cohousing communities
imposing a Transfer Fee on the selling/buying transaction?  And if so, how
was this decided, how much is the fee, and what have been the consequences.
And if not, has this been the result of a decision?  And if so, we would
like to know more about that decision process.

Thank you.      

Don Benson
Trillium Hollow Cohousing - Portland 
Posted by Charles Maclean for Don