Cohousing-L Mailing List: Reserve Studies

[Jack & Carolyn Salmon (2salmon]

> 
> Have any of you gotten professional reserves studies done? If so, can you 
> give me info on whether it was useful and how big your community is. Thx
> Susan RohrbachSonora CohousingTucson

Quimper Village Board (all members) agreed to do our first reserve study before 
we actually completed construction.  We hired Association Reserves to do the 
study.   The engineer who produced it looked at plans, specifications and 
buildings under construction.  We pay for an annual (desk) review and had 
another on- site inspection report at the end of our 3rd year.  We decided to 
fund our reserves at 50%  of the full-replacement  amount.  It just made sense 
to us to ‘amortize’ at least half of the cost of future major 
maintenance/replacement from the beginning.  Lots easier financially to put a 
small amount in each year, than having to come up with big chunks of money in 
years when there are high maintenance costs.    

Carolyn Salmon
Quimper Village 
Port Townsend,WA