Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Alternative financing

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

I am guessing that tenancy is taken as a rough proxy for things that might 
actually, legitimately concern a lender / investor:  poor maintenance, no 
reserves, transiency, owner indifference, anonymity and alienation of the 
occupants, and so on.  But if these were my concerns as a lender, and I 
happened to have eyes and a brain, and I actually saw what was going in 
cohousing communities, then I would be falling all over myself to offer low 
cost loans to my best borrowers: cohousing households.

Maybe the problem here is lack of eyes and brains.  In Cambridge MA, two-thirds 
of our housing units are renter-occupied, and our City remains safe and 
well-managed; even the public schools are credible.  Maybe what cohousing needs 
most is not fewer tenants but better bankers.

RPD

> On Oct 22, 2014, at 1:37 PM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct 22, 2014, at 1:31 PM, Kathryn McCamant <kmccamant [at] 
> cohousingpartners.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> If you have more renters than homeowners (owner occupied units), you will
>> have a very hard time getting competitive mortgages. General
>> recommendation is to limit rentals to no more that 25-30% of your homes.
> 
> Some recommend even lower 10-15%.
> 
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines, Historic Takoma Park, Washington DC 
> Where all roads lead to Casablanca
> 
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