Marketing for Established Cohousing Communities

Monterey Cohousing did lots of community events - meaning events for our larger St Lois Park and Minneapolis community - when we first bought our property and started our rehab/new construction phase. Art shows, kid's fairs with puppets and clowns, and so forth. We also invited anyone to join us at our regular Thursday night community meal. This went on for several years, until our new construction phase was completed and all units sold. (It was amazing to me, how many people came and went during that interim period, from 1993-1996. Of all those that joined and left, we did get some good energy and extra help on workdays!)

Since then we've developed a regular schedule of hosting a tour and information session once every three months. People are also welcome to sign up to join us for our community dinner (with a limit of 12 so we don't have to accommodate too big a crowd.) We've been the only direct source of information about cohousing for the metro area and beyond, for those 15 years so we felt our role as ambassadors for cohousing was equally as important as developing a pool of interested buyers we could tap into when needed.

The quarterly info sessions plus a web site and a monthly email announcement sheet that is now up to something like 150-200 subscribers has worked well. During times when we've had the energy, we've hosted monthly social events where friends, former residents and the email list have been invited to join the party. That's been a great way to broaden our community beyond those of us in residence at any given time.

This ongoing outreach has generally been sufficient to get the word out about units available as they come up for sale. Sometimes they are snatched up immediately, some times they are on the market for months (especially if an owner is stuck on getting a certain price that is higher than market appreciation around us), but at least we aren't having to start from scratch explaining cohousing to every new potential buyer. The quarterly info sessions also give all of us a chance to dress the place up and create a sense of conviviality that's good for both our guests and ourselves.