Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Questions about Reserve Amounts

[Brian Bartholomew (bartholomew.brian]

If you don't keep your home in repair, then it will wear out in 25
years and be knocked down and buried in construction landfills.  If
you spent $0.5M/unit on fancy efficient construction materials, keep
them in service long enough to pay back your investment by saving
energy.  I recently read that due to lack of maintenance, in part due
to rent control preventing the owners from collecting enough rent to
pay back remodeling loans, much of the government-subsidized housing
in NYC is totaled.  This housing requires as much repair cost as it
would take to build new.  As house repair problems snowball when
ignored, the total cost would have been much lower and the housing
still intact if problems were corrected as they appeared.

Brian