Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Steve Welzer's Challenge to the cohousing 'system'

[Sophie Rubin (yophiest]

Katie,

Strong agree! Development is risky so it is important for all participants
to share the risk and the reward. Financial backers want developers to put
skin in the game, developers (and the banks that back them) want homeowners
to put skin in the game. The consistent pattern for successful projects is
that everyone is truly in it together.

As you mention, little housing at all has been built since 2008. it is
extremely difficult to make any projects profitable, let alone a new
product (cohousing) since material, labor and (now) capital costs are all
so high. There are real limits to “if you build it we will come.” Well - if
it costs me $600k to build a new unit and you can get a 10-year old house
for $500k… I’m going to have a very hard time selling those units,
co-housing or otherwise!

At $10M/project, most developers will require a bank or other financial
backer to complete the project, and that means the buck stops not with the
developer but with conservative lending institutions.

I’m very excited to take your webinar and learn more.


On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 10:24 Kathryn McCamant <
kmccamant [at] cohousing-solutions.com> wrote:

> This is exactly why I created my 500 Communities Program (see
> https://www.cohousing-solutions.com/about-the-program)  to train more
> professionals to work in this space: developers, project managers,
> marketing and process professionals. The next webinar about the program is
> April 6th, more information on my website.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, there are currently no developers initiating
> communities in the way Jim Leach or I did (Doyle St, Nevada City, Wolf
> Creek Lodge), nor (and especially) putting in their own money. So all new
> projects that have successfully launched are by people who fronted their
> own funds to find land and pay for all the development costs until they
> could get to a construction loan…. And yes, that is a big lift!