Had a good chat with Blase Lambert of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing. He answered some remaining questions on Co-operatives UK’s new MHOS model Rules. I believe we’re ready to roll now.
We also chatted about financing projects. Current alternatives include self-build-specific mortgages brokered by BuildStore (currently only applicable to freehold single homes, not housing co-ops); mortgages via e.g. Co-operative bank and Ecology building society (max limit too small for a medium sized co-operative such as ours); commercial loans via e.g. Triodos bank (commercial interest rates, much higher than mortgage rates). The Ethex ethical investment platform was discussed, as was a more distant possibility of a fund set up by leveraging monies held by mature housing co-ops.
We attended a couple of seminars, one on finance and partnerships, another on managing money.
And, as usual, we had a couple of social meetings over Zoom.
Cohousing West Midlands 