Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: pre-built or owner built

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

Shadowlake Village was built via the owner built model - we called it the 
"lot development" model. We have a mix of mostly duplexes, some 
stand-alones, and 4 attached townhouses.

We started building intrastructure in 2001 with over half of the project's 
33 lots sold. The first 20 households moved in during 2002, one or two at a 
time through the year, as their homes were completed. We continued 
marketing and selling, and the last lot was sold and its house built by 
mid-2005. The earliest residents lived in an active construction zone, the 
surfaces of our roads and pedways were very rough, and other aspects such 
as common landscaping remained incomplete for about 3 years, until the last 
house was finished.  The CH was built in 2003 after we'd sold 2/3rds of the 
lots.

The LLC initially sold empty lots for stand-alone houses and unbuilt duplex 
halves. We helped one another with design and construction via a project 
architect and a project builder, and a committee that worked with 
purchasers to help them find financing, make the decisions, work with the 
professionals, etc.

Some purchasers need to see an actual house and are just not up for 
building their own house from the ground up, so after about a year of sales 
when we had the cash flow to do it, the LLC also built out the shells of 
duplex halves where the other side of the duplex had been sold and began 
spec-building the last 3 stand-alone houses.  In all these cases a 
purchaser came along early in the construction process and took over from 
there.

Going this route was a financial necessity as we didn't have the money to 
build everything at one time. Selling lots and half-built houses over 
several years allowed those of us who were already committed to move into 
our homes much earlier than if we'd waited to make more sales, and a longer 
wait probably would have cost us some original members.  Also, when we 
finalized our site plan in 2001, there was a very limited market in this 
area for living in attached housing. We felt that our mix of attached and 
detached houses was probably the most marketable combination, and this mix 
worked well with the lot-sales model.

It's true that the earliest years of intensive meetings, when we had to 
make difficult decisions pretty fast, created a strong bond among the 
earlier members.  You can't really replicate that when almost no decisions 
are irrevocable or of truly high significance, and this is reflected in 
much lower attendance at our plenary business meetings and correspondingly 
less bonding.

However, even if we had all originally moved in on the same day, bonded to 
one another with the Krazy Glue of endless tough meetings and visioning, 
quite a few original residents have moved away by now and been replaced by 
people who didn't have that experience, and also a few original members are 
still here but have lost interest in attending meetings. I assume this 
turnover and decision-making burnout occur in project-development 
communities too. So I'd say the project model (all built at one time, with 
all or nearly all highly attached units) is not a guarantee that the 
original cohesion and common vision will be sustained.

   Muriel
   Shadowlake Village Cohousing

At 05:17 PM 6/19/2011, you wrote:

> I'm involved with a forming cohousing group in Nelson BC and we're 
> contemplating two approaches to cohousing and seeking advice and 
> experiences from the cohousing community.
>
> What are the benefits and detractors for the standard cohousing model 
> where you plan everything out then build it all then move in vs an 
> alternative model of only selling lots to members and then people build 
> their own houses.
>
> The setting would be in rural.
>
> I look forward to replies.
> Deryk
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/