This is not a “development”. It’s a settlement co-founded by the people who want to live there—the Founders. That is a critical difference to many things about it, particularly the finances. No developer means no one whose interest in making a fortune is directly opposed to the interest of the Villagers to get a wonderful place at least cost.  Instead of dog-eat-dog, we are truly “all in this together”.

This Village is to be co-founded by the 200 founding households.  So instead of conventional profit-driven financing for design, permitting, and construction, the intention is (conforming to investment laws) to pool the Founders’ funds (or borrowing capacity) and “self-finance” so as to reduce development costs (and keep more of the benefits of that investment in the local economy, most obviously if (as is likely) some of the work of constructing the site improvements is done by some of the Founders. Its a way of getting more “turns” of the money in the local economy–an important side benefit of the self-financing mode.

The attached table may look boring, but it shows something very important—the amazing truth that binding together, 200 families can make the village remarkably affordable. And so avoid the possible  “chunk of flesh” to Wall Street’s sharks.

The talk by Yohan Morgan in the first blog post here goes over this table in some detail.  The estimates in it are preliminary, but reasonable based on Yohan’s 25 years of housing development and the experts he consulted with. The take-away is that with 200 households sharing the costs of the land and site development (everything but the cost of building your own house) the cost for: your lot, equal ownership in the hundred(s) of acres of the Village Common Green plus: a road to the village, the pedestrian streets of the village, an advanced water-conserving village water system, an advanced ecological village waste-water treatment system, and a renewable village energy system could cost as little as $25,750!

If you choose to build your home yourself, the earthen materials and all the industrial components (windows, flooring, appliances, electrical, plumbing materials, etc.) of a modest, personalized and beautiful 1500 sq. ft. one story house are estimated at $40,000 by a natural building expert Yohan consulted with..

  

That means the cost of house plus land and “site development” could total as low as $66,000 for self-help owner builders. .   With more detailed budgeting on an actual site this number may be higher, but can be expected to be under $100,000 total construction cost!.

For those who have to pay others for the building labor, add at most $80,000 for labor.  Then the range appears to be from $150-$180,000 for the turnkey earthen house able to stand for 1000 years sited within your own Village lot with all renewable and regenerating utilities to it and your equal & indivisible share in the 100 acre+ green belt– all in this extrordinary  new village.    This is in a region where house on the real-estate market start at around $500,000 now (9/2016).

These numbers are preliminary, but appear possible at this writing.

Imagine that!