Get It Together.

How is your co-development model different from a standard approach to development?

Well, we create building groups, and we have an advisory arm, so we're effectively development managers. Building groups are structures that bring a group of residents together and enable them to act as a group of owner-builders. For example, we're doing a project with 21 homes and what we've done for them is take their vision around the community they wanted and help refine it. We identified the size of land that'd be required, we helped them acquire it. We created the legal structure to do it by setting up an entity which we used to purchase the land, so all the members have a shared ownership. With this approach, it means the owners maintain control over the development process, because each member gets a vote on the management committee and all the decisions about the project are made by the management committee. We run the development process through all the stages, from obtaining a planning permit to appointing a builder to getting the construction finance and then delivering the buildings. So, where it's different to a traditional development model is you usually have a developer who controls everything: they purchase the land, it's their vision, and they speculate what the market wants. Whereas our approach is flipped, because we have the end users as part of development. Doing it this way, means the members of the collective contribute their money during the development phase, and because they’re co-developers, they receive their homes at cost price. They've taken on the risk, so their reward is that they get a cheaper home.

How did you get interested in alternative housing models?

I was always interested in property and then I went into a joint venture with my mum, actually. I didn't have the money to do it myself, so we got a bunch of people involved on an eight-dwelling venture down in Melbourne. These were all investors though, so a bit different to the model I just explained. It was a fun personal property experience, but I thought the model needed a bit of work to make it better.

A few years later, myself and a friend from high school who's an architect, were getting to the stage of buying houses for our families. We just couldn't find anything in the market we thought was good for our price point. So, we got a couple of other friends, and we ended up buying a block of land in Northcote and building four town houses together. Now, ten years later, we've put together ten collectives and built 80 homes.

How does the financing work?

We've had a number of loans from different banks, so there's been many conversations about this. Some banks haven't wanted to stray from their typical approach to funding developments, where others have been more open to doing things a little bit differently. How it works is, the first loan is for purchasing the land and the group borrows collectively for that purchase. The individuals are providing guarantees for the land purchase, so that loan might be 60 per cent of the land value with the members then putting in 40 per cent equity. The second stage is construction, and the same thing happens; the collective needs to put in equity to cover whatever the bank's not funding. The final stage is when the buildings get delivered and people get their strata title. At this point, all the individual members pay out their proportion of the construction debt, so once the titles are issued to the individuals, they'll either get a home loan, or we've got a lot of downsizers, so they sell their house to pay it off. Then the owners take over as the official owners corporation.

Biggest challenges you've faced, and lessons learnt?

I think there's three categories of challenges: social, financial and general development stuff. With the social, a challenge was creating a robust process and the biggest lesson we learnt was managing everybody's expectations. After the first couple of projects, we created a rule book, and one of those rules is we don't let people choose their dwellings until after they're approved. We've got people coming into the process before they've even bought a piece of land, and obviously there's a concept plan, but it's not approved, so they can get their heart set on something. We realised this was creating a bit of tension, so we brought in another rule where it's an ordered selection, based on when people get involved, but no one chooses until after planning's approved. What this means is the group's working together and making decisions in the best interest of the project for a long period of time.

What’s the future for co-development nationally and within the Byron Shire?

I think we're looking at an exciting future for citizen-led development in Australia. Increasingly people are searching for more control, community, and authenticity in their lives and this model offers a unique pathway to achieve those things. The main challenge is making people aware this solution exists and giving them confidence they can do it. ▲