Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Regarding Affordability in Cohousing

[John Sechrest (sechrest]

Doing a little math to see how this fits and using a mortgage calulator.

The average annual wage in the US is 45000.
After taxes, you have 1/3 of your income to spend on housing, which is
$1050.
In the NW, this will buy you a house for $186,000, with a down payment of
$37,000

I suspect that collecting the down payment may be an issue for folks who
are at an average income.



On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Angela Steiert <angie.steiert [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> I think it is safe to say that unless a community has subsidized a unit or
> gotten section 8 housing approval, that most co-housing communities prices
> put their members in a higher income bracket.  $230,000 & $250,000 is a lot
> of money.  Someone would have to make at least $75,000 a year to pay that
> mortgage and less than 15% of American's make that much money.  Therefore
> only the top 15% of American's  are able to participate in a cohousing
> community at those prices, which makes it a somewhat elitist entity.  I
> live in a cohousing community and I did not pay that much money, but I was
> quite shocked to see the majority of prices for communities when I was
> hoping to join one. I am a teacher, and I find it quite sad to think that
> most teacher's, unless they have two incomes in their homes, could not live
> in a cohousing community.  There is really no easy answer to this, as I
> have come to realize that most cohousing communities are private entities,
> and that cohousing is in limited quantity in the US which makes it more
> valuable. I do think we have to acknowledge the reality of cohousing in
> America.  So, there are places out there with more reasonable prices, but
> even those are probably too high for many Americans at the wages they
> currently make.
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
>
>
>


-- 
John Sechrest      .  Need to schedule a meeting :
http://sechrest.youcanbookme.com
                                   .
                                        .
                                                .

                                                          .
     sechrest [at] gmail.com
                                                                       .
                           @sechrest  <http://www.twitter.com/sechrest>

         .
        http://www.oomaat.com
               .