Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Architectural visualizations

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Feb 23, 2022, at 7:57 AM, Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> We developed drawings and a had a
> preliminary architectural document for our proposal for the parking
> lot across the street, but maybe if we had a better presenation we
> could have attracted more people.  You have to imagine it before you
> can build it. 

I wonder how the balance is shifting in cohousing to expecting traditional 
marketing pitches with $5,000 presentations. I wonder if in 2000 any group was 
able or willing to spend $5,000 on a traditional real estate presentation. 
Chicken and egg question clearly but I think it deserves some thought.

If I were starting a new community today, I would show examples, tons of 
examples from the Web of what we were planning to do. “We can do this or we can 
do that. This cost this much in Montana, it would cost us this much more. The 
visual image is important so everyone has the same vision, but does a group 
need to pay $5,000 to get individual designs.  For zoning, yes. But 
presentations are becoming as complex and costly as those for commercial market 
rate housing. The visuals have to be elegant enough to justify the prices.

I’m not saying that groups have to sell community, not real estate, or that 
anyone who asks about prices and sizes first isn’t a good community candidate. 
Certainly people are looking for a place to live physically as well as 
socially, but at what point are you attracting people using the same sales 
pitches that up-scale condos use and then being distressed that no one wants to 
do any work? Cook any meals?

There are realities to the cost of construction certainly, and limitations from 
zoning, but how much of the upscaling of prices has to do with an acceptance of 
the real estate market as it is, rather than the impetus of cohousing to do 
things better at a price we can afford and do it collaboratively so we have 
higher value than money can produce?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org