Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Anyone specialize in selling houses in cohousing communities?

[Kathryn McCamant (kmccamant]

I would love to have local realtors be well enough informed to be able to
represent cohousing sales.... I do think that realtors can offer a useful
service, and they should be getting to understand cohousing when there is
a community in their locale as that is part of their market.

That being said, I have to say I have been very dissappointed by the
realtor community. I have reached out to them repeatably, and tried to
educate the local community, but have seen very few cohousing sales come
thru a realtor. 

Sometimes you can find a local realtor that will give you a flat fee or .5
- 1% commission to list the home on MLS and draw up the contracts, but
assumes you'll bring in the buyer thru your own outreach.  I would always
offer a full buyers commission to any realtor that does bring you buyer.

For resales, I recommend:

Notice out to your local database (no database? That's where most existing
communities drop the ball, they haven't kept a database of all the people
who have come thru the community over the years...)

Flyers out in all the usual places (like you did when you were first doing
outreach in the development phase).

Everything you can do thru CohoUS.. Classified ad, enhance your
community's directory listing, put it in Cohousing Now!.

It appears that many, if not most, cohousing resales come thru our
communities' social networks.... So keep your community posted and up to
date on the status of the sale. Remind your community members that you
need their involvement to makes sure your home is sold to someone that
fits well with the community. Ask them to please let everyone they know,
know about the sale. Include them in showing your place, invite potential
buyers to dinner, etc....

Katie 

-- 
Kathryn McCamant, President, Architect
CoHousing Partners, LLC
241 Commercial Street
Nevada City, CA 95959
T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755
www.cohousingpartners.com





On 7/17/14 2:16 PM, "Edie Farwell" <edie.farwell [at] gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Does anyone have expertise or work as a realtor in selling houses in
>cohousing communities? I ask as I am selling our wonderful house at Cobb
>Hill CoHousing in Hartland, Vermont,
>http://cobbhill.org/membership/sales-a-rentals and a local realtor¹s
>advice was that mainstream realtors won¹t be much help, and that someone
>who knows how to market well in the cohousing community would do much
>better.  So am wondering if anyone is a cohousing realtor or the like?
>
>Thanks,
>Edie Farwell
>edie.farwell [at] gmail.com
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