Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Rental policies?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 8 Nov 2011, at 8:40 PM, Marty Roberts wrote:

> Many  
> of you probably know about the law going into effect Jan. 1 that will  
> not allow CC&R's to limit rentals if the don't already have this in  
> their CC&R's.

I don't know about this law. What is its purpose? Where is Sebastopol.

> We are looking at a proposal that no more than 3 of our 14 houses can  
> be rented out at any one time.  We have heard that with 50% rentals,  
> homes would have a very hard time selling or getting financing.

Our policy on "leasing" which means renting a whole unit, owner absent is 
posted on our website under Governance Documents.

Our limit is something like 4 of 43. I think we were recently told that above 
15% was an alert for the bank. Our problem would be how do we refuse the 5th 
person who wants to rent?

We haven't been confronted with this so we don't know but those selling units 
are quite aware of this and they do think "I need to sell now so if I can't 
sell, I can rent before anyone else tries to rent."

We also have a limit of 3 years that a person can rent a unit. We've extended 
this twice and refused to do it in one instance when the renters were not 
participating in the community. In all other instances, I think the renters 
were very active in the community. We've been very fortunate in this. 

One inadvertent advantage to having a length of time limit is that the renters 
can be allowed to buy. If an owner keeps the unit, promising to return maybe 
but never does, it leaves the community and the renter in limbo. No one wants 
the renter thrown out and another unit may not be available. 

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org