“Why is cohousing so expensive? Tiny houses too?”

 “Why are cohousing units so expensive?  As chair of the Membership Committee at Elderberry, I hear that a lot, despite the fact that we seem to be the least expensive community in our region of North Carolina,¹

Right now, Elderberry has our one tiny house above (325 square feet) for sale.  And we’ve heard that question again.  So, I looked up a Forbes February 26, 2024 article “How Much Does A Tiny House Cost?”² and this is what it said - “On average, a tiny home costs about $50,000...The cost you’ll end up paying for tiny homes depends on the size, quality and details of the house you choose…. a custom tiny house with custom features and build-ins can easily cost as much as $100,000 or more.” 

Now, Elderberry’s tiny house is selling for $165K (its appraised value; and it definitely fits the custom features mentioned above).  But, where do the extra costs come from in this house and in cohousing units in general?

In cohousing, as in condos, planned communities, HOAs, etc. homeowners often jointly own community property as well,  Therefore, that share of the entire property is added to the cost of each house.  But cohousing really does share some additional, very special features.

We had some fun at Elderberry brainstorming the amenities included with our tiny house and you can apply many of these to homes in other cohousing communities. 

First of all, it’s a permanent house – custom-designed with special environmental and accessibility features, sturdily built on a foundation on a lot that you own – not by developers who were interested in making a quick buck, but by fellow community members who plan to live here as neighbors for a long time.  And these same folks designed, and continue to maintain, a ton of community features around their homes and this particular tiny home.

Here’s the fun part – a list of things you DO NOT NEED in your home here because the community has already provided them in the common house (which in this case is only about 33 steps from the door of our tiny home).

·         Washers & dryers

·         Guest bedroom and bath

·         A great big kitchen. full of every pot, pan, utensil, dish and appliance you could need (including shared freezer space)

·         Big tables and a bunch of chairs in case your relatives/friends decide to party with you!

·         Exercise equipment

·         A comfy seating area by the woodstove, as well as a large-screen TV to share movies and broadcasts

·         Craft space, with a sewing machine

And there’s more –

·         Dog park with lots of room to run and play

·         Plenty of space to garden

 ·         Trail system (we are lucky enough that Potluck Farm community next door shares their miles of wooded trails with us.  And, many communities are also situated in or near beautiful natural settings)

·         Lawn chairs, swing, picnic tables, grills and fire pit (the light brown house in the center of this photo is our tiny house)

·         Woodshop and a machine shop with every manner of tool, bolt/screw/or whatsit you could ever need

·         Tool barn and garden shed with more equipment than a hardware store – think ten wheelbarrows and seven weedwhackers and ladders of every size!

 ·         Solar panels

Do these things add to the value and therefore the cost of the house?  Of course!  But the other cool thing about cohousing is that there’s not some manager or realtor who has no concern for whether I personally can afford to live here.  Instead, here (and other cohousing communities) my neighbors are consistently trying to keep costs down for all of us.

And last there are the intangible things to balance costs.  This mostly consists of fellow members who—

·         Can help you learn how to use all the things above and maybe even keep you from having to hire someone.

 

·         Will share what they have with you (from a pint of half-&-half to a ride to the airport)

·         Will help you live a healthier life – eating, exercising, gardening, working together and laughing

·         Give you a reason to come out and play – for free!

Okay, I know that if you’re interested in cohousing, you are looking for more than an inexpensive kit house to just plop down somewhere,  but I just wanted to give you a perspective on why cohousing does cost more and what that money buys you.  Come visit³ Elderberry’s tiny house or any other cohousing community and see what I mean.  

¹ Elderberry is 20 minutes north of Durham; and our region has at least 10 cohousing communities.

²  https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/contractor/tiny-house-cost/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20a%20tiny%20home,researching%20common%20tiny%20house%20costs

³If you’d like to visit, just e-mail me (Karolyn) at richard.mangeot@usa.net and definitely look at https://www.elderberrycohousing.com/homes-available.html

Working and Cohousing!

Nobody says “I want to live in cohousing so I can work!” 

And yet, work is a part of every cohousing community. You live together, you work together. But what I’ve learned from attending conferences and reading list-serves, is that the definition and the expectations/requirements of “work” are different at every community. And you should probably ask about this upfront.

At Elderberry work actually starts with the Membership Process itself. It requires participation in at least one of our work days (which we have twice a month for 3 hours each). That’s because we want prospective members to know what we mean by “work” here. And we want them to know that we expect participation in our “work”.

The first Cohousing National Conference I attended I sat in awe as someone explained the impressive system their community had developed to keep track of every member’s work hours. They would credit or dock members’ money for hours worked or not worked. Wow!... We don’t do that at Elderberry.  

At Elderberry we do our best to make the point that we’re all in this together, and every work contribution each person makes benefits the community and… helps keep our assessments down.  

We also want folks to realize that it can actually be fun to work together.

I will never forget my first time at the annual work day at Bella Vista, our forest overlook. The jobs offered were “running a bush hog, driving the tractor, or chain-sawing”. Turns out there was another option — picking up rocks! You say, you’ve never done any of those things? Here’s your chance to add one to your skillset… or just pick up rocks.

Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be Superman or woman to work here. Not everybody has the strength, the endurance or dexterity to do every job. But they can work on committees; they can bring snack to the other workers; they can research where to buy mulch; they can even write a blog!

Because Elderberry is rural and because we have a tradition from our very beginning of developing the buildings and properties ourselves, we tend to like to work outdoors together — on the landscaping, in the gardens, on our trails,

and even on local roads where we pick up trash!

Like all cohousing communities, we also have work indoors. There are regular maintenance jobs in the “Hive”* from vacuuming to washing windows to cleaning the bathrooms (sorry about mentioning that last one!) *The “Hive” is our Common House, which comes from one of our values of “Living in a beehive of activity.”

And speaking of a Beehive of activity, we have our own SWARM! It developed because our original Work Coordinating Committee was too dull. If you ask every single person at Elderberry what SWARM stands for, no one would remember, but I’m told reliably that it’s an acronym for Smart Work Assignment Resource Management. It’s a carefully organized stack of jobs organized by frequency. If you’re going to do a specific job, you take the card and put it back in the “Done” box when you’re finished. Not very high-tech, but effective. (FYI, SWARM does not keep records of who works or how much they work.)

By the way, saying “I’ve never done this before” doesn’t buy you anything. A big part of work here is learning to do new things. “Try it, you’ll like it!” may not always work, but at least you’ve learned a bunch of things.

Another way that Elderberry teaches folks is through our Repair Café.  

This was started by our Living Rightly on Earth group to encourage repairing rather than replacing items.  It has become a place where the folks who know how to do something teach the folks who don’t – like sharpening tools, repairing a lamp, tightening the rungs on a stool!

Elderberry’s Woodshop and machine shop (known as the Forge) are another example. The folks with skills will help others learn to use this equipment or maybe just find the screw or pliers they need.

So, I’ve learned some things while working and living here at Elderberry over these past 8 years:

+ It is a lot of fun working with other people.  

+ If you’re a Zen weeder or you’re fussy about the way the silverware drawer is arranged or there’s only room for one on the riding lawn mower, it’s also okay to work by yourself. 

+ If you’re the kind of person who gets uptight if someone doesn’t do their “fair share”, give it up.  Unless it warrants a community intervention, your irritation will only make you unhappy and probably won’t affect the person you think is slacking.  

Which brings me to—

+ Work because you want to help the community. Use your skills to make life better for everyone. Feel good about that! 

And that brings me to—

+ Whether you’ve done some jobs all your life or you never ever thought you would be doing this, you can learn something new. Really! And that is definitely good!