Yeah, when I looked into cohousing this is what I concluded too. My husband and I ended up buying a house with 6 bedrooms and occupying two of them (then adding two more family members and building two more bedrooms.) None of our housemates would have bought in because they’re not sure how long-term they want to be here, but they’re happy to be renters and we’re happy to own the building.
To us it’s important that the arrangement be flexible; rather than a single big house we bought a house that had been divided into two apartments, so if we ever want to stop having housemates or we can’t find housemates who want to live with us, we can pick the smaller or the larger apartment and rent the other one out. There’s also some possibility of our kids wanting to rent from us in 20 years, which we think will work better if they can have their own apartment. I wouldn’t have wanted to sink our savings into something that would really only work in one configuration.
Yeah, when I looked into cohousing this is what I concluded too. My husband and I ended up buying a house with 6 bedrooms and occupying two of them (then adding two more family members and building two more bedrooms.) None of our housemates would have bought in because they’re not sure how long-term they want to be here, but they’re happy to be renters and we’re happy to own the building.
To us it’s important that the arrangement be flexible; rather than a single big house we bought a house that had been divided into two apartments, so if we ever want to stop having housemates or we can’t find housemates who want to live with us, we can pick the smaller or the larger apartment and rent the other one out. There’s also some possibility of our kids wanting to rent from us in 20 years, which we think will work better if they can have their own apartment. I wouldn’t have wanted to sink our savings into something that would really only work in one configuration.
Thanks a lot for sharing. I think there’s something valuable to be learned from how you’ve managed to maintain option value.